More Than Human

Author: Theodore Sturgeon

There was a period when science fiction tended to refer to the next stage in human evolution as homo superior, and one of the ways of achieving this state was through a gestalt, a number of individuals working as one. The idea is there, for instance, in The Inner Wheel by Keith Roberts, but itâ€™s most successful expression was probably in this novel by Theodore Sturgeon. Through three linked stories, we follow the development of a gestalt, starting with a loner with telepathic abilities who begins to gather odd children around him. When he dies, a sociopath takes over the group, but in the last story an air force engineer who has been locked in an insane asylum becomes the groupâ€™s conscience, and so completes the homo gestalt. Why itâ€™s on the list: The novel, which won the International Fantasy Award, is perhaps Sturgeonâ€™s masterpiece, a brilliant account of how the collective outweighs the individual, and opens up new ways for human development.