So this was Kurt Vonnegut’s model for Kilgore Trout. You pick up the book, turn to the back cover and are confronted with the man.

This is one of the science fiction books that-even now, more than fifty years later-needs to be read. Sturgeon was always an accomplished writer, but in this book he outdid himself. Best of all, it ends with a surprising revelation that leaves the reader with the conviction that there is indeed hope for the future without in any way diminishing the challenges and the loneliness of the individual human life. It has passages of loneliness as fierce as anything you will find in Job, Robinson Crusoe, Hunger, or Native Son, and yet everything in it points toward love, despite the bleakest of conditions. Stylistically and structurally, it's The Sound and the Fury of science fiction novels: the tale of an idiot not an quite idiot, whose tale-not as simple as it seems-is bound up with the narratives and lives of others which give his story its meaning. When they do, they begin to realize that together they constitute a new form of life- homo gestalt, they call themselves-which might just be the next step in human evolution. More Than Human is about six people-each with a distinct and extraordinary power-who wander lost and damaged until they discover one another. But if you are one of those rare souls who sense that completion demands more than a wife or a husband, who yearn to find a small group of friends like yourself-but different-who can believe and will the same thing and yet still manage to preserve their distinctive humanity, then this book is the thing for you. If you have ever been lonely and longed for completion, you will be drawn to this book. Theodore Sturgeon explores questions of power and morality, individuality and belonging, with suspense, pathos, and a lyricism rarely seen in science fiction.

For as the protagonists of More Than Human struggle to find who they are and whether they are meant to help humanity or destroy it. In this genre-bending novel - among the first to have launched scifi into the arena of literature - one of the great imaginers of the twentieth century tells a story as mind-blowing as any controlled substance and as affecting as a glimpse into a stranger's soul. Together, they compose a single organism that may represent the next step in evolution, and the final chapter in the history of the human race. 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. There's Janie, who moves things without touching them, and there are the teleporting twins, who can travel ten feet or ten miles. There's Lone, the simpleton who can hear other people's thoughts and make a man blow his brains out just by looking at him.

More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon