More Than Human

This is a book in three distinct parts. The first two parts are powerful, impressive, and rather shocking; at least by the standards of the early 1950s. It's shaping up to be a great classic.

The third part is still good in its way, it's not a failure, but I find it less convincing; it seems rather eerily to anticipate the mindset of the 1960s.

The story dramatizes the evolution of a new form of humanity: homo gestalt. We see it coming together uncertainly in its early stages and fumbling towards viability. The three parts of the book show successive stages of the process, all richly imagined with many details and individual personalities.

The third part is broadly correct in its theme, but there were many possible ways of handling it, and I don't think Sturgeon picked one of the better ways. So I give the book as a whole four stars rather than the five it might have had.

The gestalt described in the story is not at all plausible, but that's not the point. I don't think Sturgeon was saying, “This is going to happen!”; he was saying, “Wouldn't it be amazing if this happened!”. The book is more fantasy than science fiction, but it's written like science fiction and so the reader tends to assume that's what it is.

Sturgeon also seems to be trying to suggest that some people who become useless failures in our society may have hidden talents that they're unaware of or don't know how to use (though probably not the talents described in this book!).

More generally, I suppose that most people fail to live up to their potential, because it's hard to find out what their potential is, where their true talents lie, what would be the ideal jobs for them.