SF Masterwork of the Week: More Than Human

Theodore Sturgeon made his first professional sales in 1937, but began his writing career in earnest in 1946, after travelling for some years. He produced an extraordinary body of short fiction – which is collected in thirteen volumes and available as SF Gateway eBooks –  and the genre’s premier award for short fiction is named in his honour. Among his many claims to fame are ‘Sturgeon’s Law’: ‘90% of everything is crud’, and the creation of the Vulcan mating ritual, the pon farr, in his script for the Star Trek episode ‘Amok Time’.

In addition to his acclaimed short fiction, Sturgeon was responsible for a number of well-received novels, most notably More Than Human: an award-winning tale of alienation, evolution and humanity.

 
All alone: an idiot boy, a runaway girl, a severely retarded baby, and twin girls with a vocabulary of two words between them. Yet once they are mysteriously drawn together this collection of misfits becomes something very, very different from the rest of humanity. This intensely written and moving novel is an extraordinary vision of humanity’s next step.

Shortlisted for the 1953 Retro Hugo Award for best novel (awarded 2004).

More Than Human is available as an SF Masterworks paperback and an SF Gateway eBook. You can find more of Theodore Sturgeon’s work via his author page on the SF Gateway website and read more about him in his entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.