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Page 177
Here and the Easel," a novella based in language as well as in theme on Ariosto's 16th-Century epic Orlando Furioso, because in fact nobody else would have seen that the subject couldn't have been handled any other way. (. . .) And even Sturgeon's verbal excesses are his own; he does not call upon exotic or obsolete words for their own sakes, or otherwise the multitudinous seas incarnadine; he never says anything is ineffable or unspeakable, the very ideas embodied in those words being foreign to his artistic credo; he does not splash color on with a mop, or use the same colors for everything; and he does not say "partly rugose and partly squamose" when he means "partly rough and partly scaly."
This quality of freshness of language even when it is out of control which is not oftenis due primarily to the fact that Sturgeon is an intensely visual writer. His images come almost exclusively from what he sees, as Joyce's came almost exclusively from what he heard. (. . .) Readers who do not think in terms of visual imagesa very large group, as the electroencephalographers have shown us; perhaps as many as half of usare likely to be baffled by this, or at least put off. They will get along much better with a writer like Poul Anderson, who follows a deliberate policy of appealing to at least three senses in every scene. Sturgeon's extremes of visualization probably lie at the root of the rather common complaint that he is a "mannered" writer.
James Blish (as "William Atheling, Jr."), "Caviar and Kisses: The Many Loves of Theodore Sturgeon" (1961), More Issues at Hand (Chicago: Advent, 1970), pp. 7072
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David N. Samuelson
Not sharing the preference of many writers and fans for "pure" science fiction, Sturgeon is conscious nevertheless of the need to overcome the reader's disbelief of the improbable. He does so, however, primarily by literary, rather than by "scientific" (science fictional) means. Sturgeon by no means assumes a lawless universepsi powers in More Than Human are subject to rules and limitationsbut he does not feel it incumbent upon him to give a detailed explanation of the laws of nature which apply to his fictional world. Little or no explicit rationalization is offered for his characters' ability to defy natural laws apparently operable in the real world; he merely demonstrates their abilities in action, as they appear both from outside and from within the characters' minds.

 
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