The Synthetic Man (#N3344)

"The Dreaming Jewels," a novel by Theodore Sturgeon, is a well-written and moving blend of science fiction, horror, mystery, love story, and coming-of-age tale. It tells the story of Horton "Horty" Bluett, a young boy who lives unhappily with his abusive adoptive father. The boy's only "friend" is a jack-in-the-box with glittering, jeweled eyes. To escape the abuse, Horty runs away and joins a traveling freak show, where he is befriended by an extraordinary trio of midgets. Ultimately, Horty's odyssey leads him to seek the mystery behind a strange and marvelous life form that is unlike any other species on earth."Jewels" is a fascinating story. A key theme is the notion of being a "freak," an outcast. Sturgeon effectively explores the emotional ramifications of this theme, and vividly depicts his outcasts' search for love and community. He makes good use of the carnival setting in his narrative. Although the story's villainous characters are a bit shallow, the other characters are complex and well-developed.Other important themes in "Jewels" include education, masquerade (including gender-switching), transformation, and communication in its many forms. Sturgeon explores both individuals' desire to dominate and abuse others, as well as the capacity for love and tenderness. Sturgeon's prose style is well suited for the complex task of this book. Overall clear and economical, his prose is at times richly descriptive, at times quite poetic.At one point Charles Fort, the tireless documenter of strange phenomena, is mentioned in the book, and that reference is quite resonant. In "The Dreaming Jewels," Sturgeon embraces and celebrates those who are seen as weird or deviant, and discovers the humanity behind the freak show exteriors.

Sturgeon has a remarkable imaginative gift, and a style equal to the task of expressing it - not as lyrical as Bradbury's, more in a sardonic vein. He has a sharp eye for the incipient paranoia and multiple repressions of early 1950's America, in which sex, relative social status, and (brand new) nuclear weapons posed threats of roughly equal weight; this background is taken as a given, and is skewered with a reasonably light touch. The real theme is the need for spiritual development, in a world dominated by the drives toward wealth and (more essentially) power. But this is handled very indirectly, as a fantasy based on a simple science fiction premise, which is revealed gradually in the early part of the story. This premise, by the way, is wholly improbable in any literal sense; it is roughly on a par with the mystical assumptions of any of the currently popular religions. One is not expected to spend a lot of time worrying about the science of it. It fits in the world of the book a good deal more neatly than the more strenuously worked out hypotheses of other writers. The book begins, "They caught the kid doing something disgusting out under the bleachers at the high-school stadium ..." and one is left quite deliberately to one's presumably lurid imagination until page 4, where the nature of the offense is revealed ... though the point of the episode is saved for much later, when it fits in naturally with the basic premise. The inane vulgarity of that opening line represents one of the two poles of Sturgeon's Manichaean world. The book is a real pleasure to read, on several levels. There is a quiet humor and intelligence behind the story (and perhaps an air of desperation as well). These themes were tackled in more direct ways by Kerouac and Salinger, among others in the U.S. Sturgeon's approach is more reminiscent of Hesse or Kafka; he's not in their league, by any means, but he's good in his own way. His characterization is generally weak and one-dimensional, perhaps to the point of self-parody. This is often the case in satire (Swift, Vonnegut). Sturgeon is less interested in his characters than in their various epic struggles, internal and external, but endows the key ones with enough life to keep them interesting. His greatest weakness is his adherence to the rule that the bad shall be punished and the good rewarded, before the final curtain. This is really not consistent with his world view.I've been a bit heavy-handed in my description - Sturgeon doesn't beat you over the head with his big themes, but he doesn't bury them either. He just tells a simple story of a badly mistreated orphan with a curious jack-in-the-box with glowing eyes, and lets you make of it what you will.I should add that Sturgeon's "More than Human" is a distinctly stronger book with related themes and a more interesting premise, and one should read that novel before this one; if that doesn't give you considerable pleasure, then you may as well leave this

I think that his first novel, although he had written plenty of short stories (and would only add to that number . . . the ten volume series reprinting all his short stories is a godsend, check it out!). The plot isn't so much science fiction as borderline fantasy, Horty is a young man caught doing something disgusting behind the bleachers (you'll probably laugh when you find out what it is, either Sturgeon was making some sort of a joke or people were really different back in the fifties) and his mean stepfather "accidentally" severs three of his fingers (though not the most disgusting finger severing sequence, the second one is far more disturbing), so he runs off and joins the circus. The plot starts to twist and turn at that point and jump ahead, sometimes not to its complete benefit, a lot of things either don't get explained or aren't explained well (the origins of the jewels and what they do does seem to change as the story progresses) but the thing that hooks you in and keeps you reading is Sturgeon's overriding compassion and love for everything and everyone. He can find something sympathetic is just about everyone (the only character that I couldn't like even some small part was Horty's stepfather, I found him mostly pathetic but that was the point), even the dreaded Maneater has some redeeming values. There's a lot of touching scenes, especially as Horty comes to grips with what he might be and the consequences of that. Really it's just a heartwarming novel written by a guy who had a great store of humanity and showed it in his stories. Never dripping with sentiment to the point where you feel like you're overwhelmed with emotion, the book remains compulsive reading and just as essential reading as his other two novels (More Than Human and Venus Plus X), he keeps things brisk and moving. Simply put, he showed right from the start that even in the beginning he was as good as the best. And he only got better from here.

It is hard to believe this book was written 50 years ago. Everything about it is still modern. The symbolism and characterization make this book worthwhile even if you don't like sci-fi. It is short, but it will stick with you for a long time.

This is, for me, better than More Than Human. The plot moves, the characters are alive, deep, the story is so intense. Reading Sturgeon, one can see exactly who Stephen King is trying to emulate!