He could tell you things that make your hair curl, lose you sleep, or things that make you laugh.” He looked up at her swiftly, and away. And what folks were like a hundred years ago or even a thousand. He could tell you things about what people are like all over the world, the way they live, everything. “Tell you what, suppose you had a friend, he knew a whole lot more than you do. He looked at the still water for a moment, thinking. It’s just that nobody ever asked me that before.”

Now he laughed, and she flared up at him, “You laughing at me?” She seemed to be having a great deal of trouble getting used to the idea of a man reading a book. She looked at the volume where it lay by the boulder, at Scott, at the book again. (#152974).“I never read a book in my life,” she said again. One copy of the proof with first state text is known this is the third known copy of the proof with second state text rare. This copy is signed on the front wrapper by Sturgeon. Mild tanning to wrapper edges, internally fine. Survey of Science Fiction Literature III, pp. Pringle, Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels 14. The book was jointly published by Ballantine Books and Farrar, Straus and Young. It is told with the author's characteristic depth of emotional resonance. In this story, the six outcasts come together to form a more-than-human collective psyche. The story expresses a recurrent theme in the author's work: the passage of a character (or, in this case, six of them) from freak to superman, a passage of self-discovery and self-realization, if not apotheosis.

It won the 1954 International Fantasy Award. MORE THAN HUMAN is one of Sturgeon's best and probably his best-known novel.

Working in the corner of a busy office at his publishers, he rewrote the final portion.' Sturgeon rewrote four other sections as well, albeit less extensively. According to Sturgeon (his handwritten note made in a copy of the earlier state of the galleys), 'a few hours before 'More Than Human' went to press, the author felt a profound dissatisfaction with the last section. The new copy is inserted on typed manuscript pages (ribbon and carbon copy) stapled to the relevant leaves. The changes occur on leaves 16, 120, 136, 139, and 144-145 (the last two leaves are excised) and consisted mostly of insertions of new copy, ranging from about 150 words in one case to about 1500 in another (at the story's conclusion). The second state of the advance copy, incorporating the extensive last-minute changes that Sturgeon made at the publisher's office. Advance copy (bound unpaged galley proofs) of the first edition, second state. Tall octavo, 143 printed leaves, plus typewritten inserts, plain gray wrappers, Ballantine Books mailing label pasted onto front cover with typewritten publication data, white plastic spiral spine, proofs of publishers' blurbs pasted onto verso of front cover.

More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon