Les plus qu'humains

This is a book I had read when I was a teenager and I didn't have that much experience in this world, but it still left a deep impression on me. The book is a mix of fantasy, psychological thriller and science fiction, divided into three parts that make up a more complex story. More than human, it deals with the next form of human evolution, one in an entirely different sense than we might expect. This is a magnificent book, especially if we put it in perspective, since it was written in the early 1950s. Although it has aged wonderfully. It takes as its main characters those on the fringes of society. A drifter with no intellectual ability whatsoever, a girl unappreciated by her mother, two black twins who don't speak, a street child, will be the protagonists not only of the novel but of what humanity can become. Remember that this book was written in the 1950s, it is not surprising that not many people liked what Mr. Sturgeon was trying to tell us. Theodore Sturgeon is one of the fathers of science fiction, and one of the best writers of the genre. Who, unfortunately, has fallen into oblivion because he did not write about spaceships or robots, which most people understand as a fundamental part of the genre. At the time, he was accused of being too sentimental because he included in his stories and novels the emotional needs of every human being, an issue that caused other writers of the genre great discomfort. After all, feelings were reserved for women and these men much preferred to exalt machines. More Than Human is a novel worth reading or rereading in my case. In retrospect, now I can appreciate it much more deeply. I can also say that its message left me with a way of seeing social codes of conduct in a very different way from the conventional one. Today, I can say that I am glad to have read it when I was so young. I must say that the “N” word is used once in the book, but the moment and the action related to it, has nothing to do with the word as we understand it now.