It starts with the outcasts
At first it seems that the main character of More Than a Man will be a very specific character – a person not very proficient in language, dark, closed in on himself and dissolving into the world around him. Worse, the author immediately calls this character a “fool”, even if fairy-tale-like. It’s very hard to understand what the story is actually about when you look at it through the eyes of Sam, the lonely man whose world is beyond. Sometimes it is like grass that pushes the pavement with its roots, because in its head it hears not only its own thoughts.
The next heroes are probably even worse – there are sisters imprisoned by their father so that they do not get dirty with splinters of the sinful world behind the fence. Black twins with developmental delays. The girl her own mother is afraid of. A baby called Little or … Mongol. More than a Man is a novel from 1953, and Joanna Pers (the translator of Delany or VanderMeer) decided to translate it faithfully, keeping the terms currently considered obscene. I think this is a great decision, because Sturgeon, using the resources available in the 1950s, at the same time undermines their legitimacy. The certainty that what the average, healthy and clean citizen considers ugly and sick is truly worthy of pity at best.
More than a human is a fantasy bordering on horror and superhero . The above-mentioned “poor kids” are elements of a larger whole, only together they create a personality or a network of minds that constitute a unity endowed with extraordinary talents. Telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation – the young mutants have just arrived and no one is ready for how they are going to live. They too.
Traps of the mind
We meet another narrator in a psychoanalytical office. It is he who will explain to us what actually happened, how we managed to put together different people into one being – homo gestalt , the supra-individual personality, a completely new quality in the evolution of our species. Together with Gerry, we will understand first of all the course of events, but not necessarily their meaning. This part will be closer to standard science fiction.
From the monologue of a demanding client spread over a classic couch, an image of a group of people somewhat condemned to each other emerges. Somewhere else there is an individuality that demands freedom for themselves and for others. Step by step, memory by memory, you will see how much they find themselves in society. It must generate strong emotions, a sense of superiority and rejection, contempt and longing for others.
Philosophical science fiction
Unexpectedly, Sturgeon will lead us to a question that must arise in the superhero genre – do mutants owe common people something? Are they part of humanity at all? And if they are, are they bound by their ethics and morals? How exactly are they supposed to relate to the rest of the world? He will do it by making one more volte in the story, throwing us into the story of another character thrown out of the normal way of life.
Sturgeon is often regarded by English-speaking critics as one of the pioneers of literary and philosophical fantasy. In fact, his work is very far from the pulp or adventure novel that framed the genre in the 1950s. It reads like psychological prose, where elements of weirdness gradually penetrate, where it blows with horror and mystery, as in a good horror film by Shirley Jackson. And when we feel the chills, it turns out that anxiety is supposed to be the basis for reflection, a thought experiment. What if a new species of human arose? Contrary to appearances, this is not a lifeless question; after all, many subcultures or minorities give the sedate citizens the impression of creatures of a completely different order, for whom there is simply no place in society.
