More Than Human cover art

More Than Human

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Thousands of incredible audiobooks and podcasts to take wherever you go.
Immerse yourself in a world of storytelling with the Plus Catalogue - unlimited listening to thousands of select audiobooks, podcasts and Audible Originals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

More Than Human

By: Theodore Sturgeon
Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki, Harlan Ellison
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Buy Now for £10.99

Buy Now for £10.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

 In this genre-bending novel, among the first to have launched sci fi into literature, a group of remarkable social outcasts band together for survival and discover that their combined powers render them superhuman.

There's Lone, the simpleton who can hear other people's thoughts; Janie, who moves things without touching them; and the teleporting twins, who can travel ten feet or ten miles. There's Baby, who invented an antigravity engine while still in the cradle, and Gerry, who has everything it takes to run the world except for a conscience. Separately, they are talented freaks.

Together, they may represent the next step in evolution - or the final chapter in the history of the human race. As they struggle to find whether they are meant to help humanity or destroy it, Sturgeon explores questions of power and morality, individuality and belonging.

©1981 The Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Genetic Engineering Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction Suspense Thriller & Suspense Genetics Fiction

Listeners also enjoyed...

 The Hunger and Other Stories cover art
Perchance to Dream cover art
Blade Runner cover art
Ubik cover art
Female Science Fiction Writer cover art
The Boy with Penny Eyes cover art
Offbeat cover art
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch cover art
Hyperion cover art
Snow Crash cover art
2001 cover art
The Big Rock Candy Mountain cover art
Nexus cover art
Midnight at the Well of Souls cover art
Gameboard of the Gods cover art
Star Maker cover art

Critic reviews

"One of the best science fiction novels of the year." ( New York Times)
"A quantum leap in the development of science fiction as an art." ( Washington Post)
"A masterpiece of provocative storytelling." ( New York Herald Tribune)
All stars
Most relevant  
I wasn't thrilled, a bit choppy but quite entertaining. Better than a lot of the free books I have tried.

worth listening

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
i don't know why the writing of this period is so good but it always is. An extraordinary tale containing moments of sublime prose delivered expertly by the two narrators. The first two chapters might appear confusing but i urge you to persevere. This is 'a cut above'.

Classic 1950's Sci-Fi

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This seminal novel started an intelligent sci-fi genre based on life and society not machines. It’s a beautifully composed mystery of exceptional characters, drama, and visionary thinking.

I think some people have been troubled by the word “idiot”. Don’t be. It’s authentic for the time but also with two technical meanings. First that the character was not older than two in himself (“profound intellectual disability where the mental age is two years or less”) and secondly i think that he is reserved to himself, which belongs to the “I’d” root in Greek. Unique to himself.

All that relates to a special character who understands babies but cannot deal with adults.

Marvellous book. An all time great beautifully performed

Remarkably wise and gripping

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
i did enjoy this book,. The narrator was very good, bringing the characters to life.
it got a bit confusing at times, purposely so, I think so I did have to relisten some parts.

a story to concentrate on

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Wish I had read this as a kid. The writing is brilliant. The narrative construction is clever and interesting. You can see the foundation of so many other stories here, so much popular culture has had a boost from these characters and ideas. Any fan of decent science fiction or superhero stories should read this. And the writing is of such quality. Do yourself a favour and see where the story takes you.

Remarkable writing. Ideas still current nearly 70 years later.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I found this as a battered paperback in the school library when I was 16, and have owned a copy ever since.
Still stands out as great writing, driven by the development of characters and a possible human evolution.
Only downside, be aware it uses historically accurste, but now unusable, terms for the black characters.

The book that got me into sci fi 40 years ago

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is an old book, written in an era when vocabulary, or labels were different to ours. I was a little annoyed at the labels used (idiot/half-wit, negro/colored, mongoloid mostly) but otherwise, the writing was balanced and literary and the people to whom those labels were given had special talents and were valued for their contributions.

This is just the type of SF that I love. More social sciences than physical sciences, an extrapolation of who and what humans are and could be, looking at our society with unveiled eyes and imagining a (better?) future than our current trajectory might suggest.

Despite special “talents” our POV characters are so real and events happen in the messy, stuttering way they do in real life. People die or are injured and the action falters.

I am sure I will read this again.

Don’t let the beginning put you off

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Pretty hard going, but worth persevering with. I did find it a bit difficult to listen to and put it down for a couple of days several times.

A good read!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
There were times while listening to this story when my attention waned. It is a strange book and quite hard to make sense of. It is poetic and beautifully written in parts and the ending was surprising and touched me, especially considering the very troubled times we are living in when it's so easy to lose faith in the basic humanity of our leaders, and to some extent, ourselves for our greed, hypocrisy and stupidity and for our lack of care and compassion for our planet and our fellow beings.

Recommended if you don't mind a perplexing, multi-layered story that sometimes allows the attention to wander.

Beautiful in parts but difficult to understand.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I started listening and found the story engaging in the beginning but I lost interested when it became too muddled.
I don’t want to knock it because it might well have been rewarding if I would have persevered

Confusing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews