More Than Human Analysis

This novel has a very vague setting. It's as if the book is so busy keeping track of all the characters' out-of-order memories and mind-powers that the setting has to go on the back-burner. Don't w...

The narrative technique in this book is quite tricky. But it all boils down to either 1) first person central narrator, 2) third person limited, 3) third person objective, or 4) moving between thir...

Hold on Shmoopers, we're about to get all professor-y and go full intellectual on everyone's favorite genre: Science Fiction. Please don't cry. It will be okay. We promise.More Than Human speculate...

Stugeon's writing style is like a chameleon: It changes often. In fact, it's one of the most unusual facets of More Than Human. Here are four common ways Sturgeon achieves his effects.LyricismWhat'...

This book is all about evolution. So yeah, according to More Than Human, we might develop psionic mind-powers next, like teleportation or telepathy. Whatever mind-powers we develop—psionic or phi...

The last lines tell us Gerry humbly joins the company of Homo Gestalt. Under Gerry, the gestalt behaved amorally—murderous and mean—for it had no society of similar beings from which to receive...

Sturgeon's Modernist techniques can make things a little complicated. The story is told out of order as characters fight to mature by processing their memories. An important character pops up and t...

The gestalt Has to Start For Action To Really StartFive lonely weirdos—Lone, Janie, the twins Bonnie and Beanie, and Baby—join together in a hidden shelter, forming the first version...

The five characters who form the first version of the gestalt—Lone, Janie, the twins Bonnie and Beanie, and Baby—come together and live in the hidden shelter. They've got a pretty decent thin...

Lone, Janie, the twins Bonnie and Beanie, and Baby join up, creating the gestalt. But when Lone dies, the others' steady life in the hidden shelter comes to an end, because they're too young to tak...

Sturgeon's short story "The World Well Lost," also from 1953, broke new ground in U.S. science fiction with its sympathetic portrayal of a gay hero who helps gay prisoners escape an interplanetary...

The only thing that keeps us from rating this book X is that you have to infer the sex from scarce details. There's plenty of it suggested, though, and for the most part, it's not pleasant. For sta...

Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs (1.23.3)Mickey Spillane, My Gun Is Quick (1.23.3)Ivan Bloch (1.23.3) A psychologist who proposed that sexuality be studied scientifically.King Arthur (2.9.3...