{"id":160,"date":"2009-11-17T00:22:28","date_gmt":"2009-11-17T00:22:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=160"},"modified":"2012-02-27T14:21:51","modified_gmt":"2012-02-27T14:21:51","slug":"more-than-human","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=160","title":{"rendered":"More Than Human"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><em>More Than Human <\/em>by Theodore Sturgeon<\/h3>\n<p>Twelve people gathered at A.T.\u2019s home to discuss <em>More than Human<\/em>,   the classic Sturgeon  novel. All of us had read Sturgeon before. We  all  started and finished this  book.\u00a0 The story is rather hard to   describe  without spoilers, but it\u2019s a science fiction novel that many  find   mind-blowing.<\/p>\n<p>One reader commented that this is a landmark book. It was  an   innovative superman story for its time, and a good treatment of   posthumans and  <!--more-->transhumans. \u00a0Another loved the depiction  of a gestalt   as a union of thoughts. We liked its examination of \u201cwhat is a   person?\u201d  and \u201cwhat is consciousness?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This book had an interesting mix of sf elements. We all   liked the  use of antigravity in the story. Some of us had more trouble  with   telepathy and other \u201cpowers of the mind\u201d. While these were  considered  valid sf  concepts in the 50s, they generally aren\u2019t now.<\/p>\n<p>There were several positive comments on the book\u2019s writing   style.  We felt the storytelling and descriptions were smooth and  brilliantly   done, and seem contemporary . We appreciated the character  development,   particularly in people who weren\u2019t nice at all. A couple  of people  felt that  the dialog in the book was \u201cstodgy\u201d and was the  only element  that felt dated.<\/p>\n<p>This book was a \u201cfix-up\u201d of three stories originally   published  separately, which led to some interesting reactions from  readers.  Many  thought the divisions between stories were merely a  stylistic choice,  and  it did not bother them at all. A couple felt that  the stories were  so separate  that there was no coherent central  narrative.<\/p>\n<p>Our discussion of this book and its concepts was so lively   that we  talked for 95 minutes. \u00a0Afterward  we picked new books for the  reading  list. Then most of us went out to dinner at  Opal Divine\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8212;A. T. Campbell, III<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon Twelve people gathered at A.T.\u2019s home to discuss More than Human, the classic Sturgeon novel. All of us had read Sturgeon before. We all started and finished this book.\u00a0 The story is rather hard to describe without spoilers, but it\u2019s a science fiction novel that many find mind-blowing. One [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":532,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions\/532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}