Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful, well-worn science fiction.
Review: I picked up this book over the summer based on the rave reviews of my amazon colleagues. I'll admit to being surprised at first, for the cover (which looked modern) distracted me from the fact that this book is over half a century old.
I'm a contemporary sci-fi fan, I think authors can use modern-day technological topography to look "so far out". That's just my thing. Well, I'm glad I gave this book a chance, because while it's more fantasy than sci-fi, technology took a back seat to the philosophical and sociological impacts of tech. In this case, a major human evolutionary leap.
Sturgeon describes the origination of a new breed of man. A man that's not one man, but a combination of parts, each serving a distinct and specialized function. Most of the book is dedicated to the gestation and organization of this species. I think I'd be more interested in More Than Human 2...I'd love to see the social, technological, and moral impacts to a world filled with "Homo-Gestalts" as the author calls them.
That aside, this book is a worthwhile read. The writing was "Hemmingway-like" in it's elegant simplicity, yet the environments were vivid, and the characters well-developed.
Enjoy,
Christian Hunter
Santa Barbara, California
Rating: 
Summary: This is one of the true sci-fi classics.
Review: I remember my first reading of this great book as a young adult and how it changed my thinking about science fiction. Previously, I thought that the genre was for fans only. Afterward, I realized that at least one author could surpass the classification of "science fiction". More than Human is great fiction that happens to also be speculative. I recommend it regularly to friends whether or not they normally read science fiction. I always have at least two copies--one for safe-keeping and a hard-bound copy to lend.
Rating: 
Summary: Not what I had hoped
Review: I was so excited about this book. A unanimous five star rating! This is unlike most science fiction books in that it is not set in the future, thus there is no futuristic technology (except for one item), and the science fiction deals purely with the evolution of the mind. That's interesting enough and the story is a good one. It is the manner in which the story is told that bothered me after a while. Sturgeon has a way of dragging you through page after page, without giving a clue to what in the world is going on until the very end of each section. Sort of like a more sadistic Steinbeck. It's constant through the book that way and I found it agonizing. This book would be complex enough without the mysterious literary style. That aside, the concept is great and the characters are interesting.
Rating:
Summary: Not SF at all.
Review: I was told off by my English teacher for reading this, 'trash' she said. I thought it was terrific but was young and kept quiet. I can't remember what she recommended but I am willing to bet a sizeable amount that it is not in print over 40 years later. I recently found it again and re-read it and it is even better written than I thought. Sad, funny and poetic. Remember Ted Sturgeon.
Rating:
Summary: Part adventure, part psychological novel, part realist saga
Review: Imagine the X-Men with superpowers confined to extrasensory gymnastics--no storm-summoning, no fire-throwing, and no metal claws--and you'll have an idea of the team that makes up the leading cast of this tale. (I note that other readers have seen the resemblance to the X-Men; the comparison is apt in many ways.)
We are first introduced to Lone, an intellectually incapacitated young man with the ability to hypnotize telepathically. After witnessing a murder and escaping death himself, he lives untamed in the forest, gathering other social outcasts who gravitate toward his cave. There's Janie, with a seemingly unlimited faculty for telekinesis; Bonnie and Beanie, two toddlers who have learned how to teleport themselves; and Baby, a mute whose body is stunted but whose brain is structured like computer. (Sturgeon's insistence on incorporating different races and both sexes as equal partners living together as a new evolutionary species was, in 1953, years ahead of its time.)
This history of this team--the newly evolved Gestalt species--is recounted in three extraordinarily different stories. Even the prose style varies: the opening section has the feel of a Gothic horror story combined with a Jack London tale; the middle is written entirely as teasing banter between a new member of the Gestalt squad and his shrink; and the final chapter could be a Depression-era tale by Steinbeck (or, more precisely, an episode of HBO's "Carnivale").
The book's shortcoming--and it's not insignificant--is Sturgeon's tendency to hammer home the import of his stories. Each of the three endings abandons subtleness and representation for bluntness and pontification; it sometimes seems that the author presents each resolution in the same manner he would reveal a mathematical proof. Thus (and I'll phrase my criticisms without exposing the book's secrets), the group of misfits discerns how they can work together as a team; thus, the team learns how they are a cohesive whole; thus, the totality endeavors to develop their own morality. Nothing is left for the reader to interpret or even to imagine.
In spite of its overly meticulous endings, "More Than Human" has much to say about human society and ethics. Part adventure story, part psychological novel, part realist saga, the whole of its parts--like the species it portrays--is unlike anything else you'll find in science fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Still Astounding 50 Years Later
Review: Okay, how many science fiction novels from the 50's have REALLY stood the test of time? `More Than Human' is devoid of slimy aliens, ray-guns, faster than light travel, time machines, robots, or any of the other "stereotypes" non-sf people associate with 50's science fiction. Well, what DOES it have going for it? How about:GREAT WRITING
Sturgeon was a thinker with a tremendous imagination. I caught myself grinning often at several of his lines, at how he avoided clichés and gave fresh ideas to simple scenes and concepts. In the first section, "The Idiot," I was reminded of the opening of Faulkner's `The Sound and the Fury.' (Yes, comparing Sturgeon to Faulkner is NOT a stretch!) The way Sturgeon gets inside Lone's head and lives there is amazing. Wonderful writing that still reads with freshness 50 years later. GREAT IDEAS
Six misfit outcasts, each with a unique gift, form a new step in man's evolution, a gestalt of unbelievable power. I won't go into the social, political, and moral implications of such an idea (Read the book), but the concept by itself is interesting. What Sturgeon does with it is fascinating. GREAT STORYTELLING
I have not researched Sturgeon very much, but from what I have gathered, he was somewhat of a rogue who loved to examine the dark side of the human psyche. This and his inability to be confined to a nice neat label come across in the writing to present a story that is exciting, awe-inspiring, and most important, honest. If you've only read a few sf writers from the 50's (such as Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury, Bester, Simak, etc.), expand your horizons with Sturgeon. You won't be sorry. 233 pages
Rating:
Summary: Still Astounding 50 Years Later
Review: Okay, how many science fiction novels from the 50's have REALLY stood the test of time? 'More Than Human' is devoid of slimy aliens, ray-guns, faster than light travel, time machines, robots, or any of the other "stereotypes" non-sf people associate with 50's science fiction. Well, what DOES it have going for it? How about: GREAT WRITING
Sturgeon was a thinker with a tremendous imagination. I caught myself grinning often at several of his lines, at how he avoided clichés and gave fresh ideas to simple scenes and concepts. In the first section, "The Idiot," I was reminded of the opening of Faulkner's 'The Sound and the Fury.' (Yes, comparing Sturgeon to Faulkner is NOT a stretch!) The way Sturgeon gets inside Lone's head and lives there is amazing. Wonderful writing that still reads with freshness 50 years later. GREAT IDEAS
Six misfit outcasts, each with a unique gift, form a new step in man's evolution, a gestalt of unbelievable power. I won't go into the social, political, and moral implications of such an idea (Read the book), but the concept by itself is interesting. What Sturgeon does with it is fascinating. GREAT STORYTELLING
I have not researched Sturgeon very much, but from what I have gathered, he was somewhat of a rogue who loved to examine the dark side of the human psyche. This and his inability to be confined to a nice neat label come across in the writing to present a story that is exciting, awe-inspiring, and most important, honest. If you've only read a few sf writers from the 50's (such as Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury, Bester, Simak, etc.), expand your horizons with Sturgeon. You won't be sorry. 233 pages
Rating:
Summary: The most thought provoking concept ever - and possible
Review: Read first more than 30 years ago, reread several times since, even after the book was damaged by water, and then loaned to a friend never to return, Theodore Sturgen's "More Than Human" remains one of the most thought provoking book I have ever read. The concept that the human race could evolve into much more than we are now is as encouraging as when the book was written. No one has all the attributes to be perfect, but there is hope. What a fascinating tale. Read it for yourself. The pleasure will be all yours
Rating:
Summary: creapy view on furure human evolution
Review: Sturgeon describes from the inside out, what it's like to be a Homo Gestalt, a new type of being, the next evolutionairy stage of mankind, in which a group of differently ESP gifted persons (children) together function as one organism. And a vastly superior organism at that. All alone on this earth, and not understood by the human society, how can this organism have ethical and moral boundaries? Why would it not kill for a whim? I've read this book with a growing sense of horror, as Sturgeon develops this concept further and further, shifting the perspective in each of the 3 parts, but always skillfully pulling the reader inside the protagonist, to make his point. Now I've finished it, some of my uncomfortable feelings are desolved because of the twist in the last paragraphs, but some still linger. A powerful book.
Rating:
Summary: You'll see yourself in it . . . like it or not.
Review: Sturgeon's most celebrated novel is a disturbing assault on our conventional sensabilities. A complex tale of complex characters that readers are sure to see reflections of themselves in; it scrutinizes a variety of issues from man's various forms of elitism to his insane repression of that most natural of human qualities: emotion. Anyone who's been told he shouldn't express his emotions too openly should read this book.
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