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conjuror's tricks. Since he does not refute the basic assumptions of science, and since the world he displays is still an orderly one, we are not so much led to a belief in "disguised spiritism" (. . .) as we are reminded that there may be wonders in the world which are still unexplained. |
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David N. Samuelson, "Theodore Sturgeon: More Than Human," Visions of Tomorrow: Six Journeys from Outer to Inner Space (New York: Arno Press, 1974), pp. 17780 |
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Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human (. . .) is a book that even today I cannot praise highly enough. Among its many excellences is the fact that it uses its considerable power as a daydream to inculcate ethical values and spiritual insights usually entirely absent from genre writing. For instance, the book's insistence on mutual interdependency (and, by implication, on psychic integration) is in sharp contrast to the legion of stories in which the hero discovers the fate of the world to rest in his sole power. Another theme of the bookthe need to bide one's timeis of obvious utility to any fourteen year old. But the largest subliminal lesson is latent in the fantasy of possessing secret powers. What this represents, I believe, is an assurance that there is a world of thought and inner experience of immense importance and within everybody's grasp. But it is only there for those who cultivate it. |
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Thomas M. Disch, "The Embarrassments of Science Fiction," Science Fiction at Large: A Collection of Essays, by Various Hands, about the Interface between Science Fiction and Reality, ed. Peter Nicholls (London: Victor Gollancz, 1976), p. 146 |
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Sturgeon's protean sense of play, that is his style, can perhaps be more fully understood now after seeing that playfulness can be a very serious idea indeedan idea that allows some balance between the longing for anthropocentrism and perhaps even the cessation of change on the one hand and the realizations of an open universe on the other. Sturgeon's style, in short, allows him the flexibility not to have to dwell for long at either pole of that opposition. He writes about people and love and loneliness (only humans can be lonely for other humans and even our pets, particularly our pets, we anthropomorphize as fellow humans); but he lets us know that there are many more things in heaven and earth as |
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