More Than Human (1953)

Theodore Sturgeon’s much celebrated novel is a kind of fix-up of three novellas. The first and third—“The Fabulous Idiot” and “Morality,” respectively—were written expressly for the novel. The centerpiece second part, “Baby Is Three,” was previously published and won awards of its own. The novel has followed a crooked path to its present status as one of the 100 best sci-fis. I didn’t know any of this when I went to read it, but I did notice that “Baby Is Three” was notably the best part. The other two were way too unnecessarily coy about letting us in on what’s going on. It’s a fantastic idea, this Homo Gestalt, the next evolutionary step from H. Sapiens. As readers, we need all the help we can get without some peekaboo routine of the determinedly slow reveal. But it’s a big and intriguing idea, this vision of human mutants. I got such a hit of X-Men at points that I wonder how well Stan Lee or whoever worked on the comic might have known this novel. The big ideas are there to be discovered (not without labor, alas, at least in my experience). Sturgeon is a name I knew way back when I was reading science fiction stories as a kid, along with Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Robert Heinlein. I don’t remember much about the Sturgeon stories, whereas stuff by Bradbury and Heinlein has stuck with me. I think most of Sturgeon’s greatest achievements are wrapped up in this novel. I wouldn’t know where to go next with him. The first part, “The Fabulous Idiot,” has some affinities structurally with William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and its baffling first part, which is also explicitly about “an idiot” (term of art in more benighted times). They are very different works, but I do wonder if Sturgeon was prone to literary pretension. Two-thirds of this book anyway suggest he might be, but I don’t know. He wrote a lot of stories that might be worth a look for a next stop. Kudos to the Library of America anthology, American Science Fiction, 1953-1956, for reminding me science fiction doesn’t have to be just space opera, which we see a lot of, of course. More Than Human is decidedly not space opera and has lots of interesting ideas about psychology and evolution, though it may not be necessarily done well overall—ambition, reach, grasp, all that. Read the first part to get to the second part. Third part optional. Another reminder of the problems with fix-ups.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over. (Library of America)