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The Dreaming Jewels (Gollancz Collectors' Editions)
 
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The Dreaming Jewels (Gollancz Collectors' Editions) (Paperback)

by Theodore Sturgeon (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 160 pages
  • Publisher: Gollancz; New edition edition (19 Oct 2000)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0575071400
  • ISBN-13: 978-0575071407
  • Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14 x 1.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 324,424 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review
Theodore Sturgeon was among SF's greatest short story writers. The Dreaming Jewels (1950) is his first novel, updating the evergreen theme of a boy who escapes cruel step-parents to join a travelling carnival.

Villainous carnival owner "Maneater" Monetre's star attractions are his "Strange People"--in cruder days, the freaks. Without preaching, Sturgeon shows these as loveable and very human. Beautiful Zelda and her fellow midgets shelter the fleeing, maimed boy Horty and disguise him as one of themselves. Solum the Alligator-Skinned Man, "ugliest human in captivity", is a sensitive soul with exquisite handwriting. There are more.

The Maneater himself, a failed scientist who hates humanity, has learned that many Strange People owe their existence to sentient but unfathomable alien jewels fallen to Earth, whose dreams take solid form:

"They dream in flesh and sap, wood and bone and blood. And sometimes their dreams aren't finished, and so I have a cat with two legs, a hairless squirrel, and Gogol, who should be a man, but has no arms, no sweat glands, no brain."

What Monetre doesn't know, and Zelda desperately conceals, is that Horty is a special person born from the dreaming of not the usual single jewel but two. When Horty later uses his strange abilities to begin revenge on his stepfather--a sexual predator who's both loathsome and pitiable--this secret leaks out, bringing his childhood sweetheart under threat. High drama follows, and Sturgeon's ending gleefully smashes the unwritten rules of romance. An enjoyable, warm-hearted SF classic. --David Langford

Product Description
Horty Bluett is eight when he runs away from home. He'd been cruelly punished: Junky, the ugly old toy with the jewel-like eyes, the only thing that really belonged to him, had been deliberately smashed. And that hurt even more than having three fingers accidentally severed. Horty finds a new home among the freaks of a travelling carnival, protected by the beautiful midget, Zena. For Zena knows the truth about Junky and the jewels. She knows that Horty is one of the 'jewel people', and she knows what others would do to him if they found out that the jewels are living, thinking alien crystals from outer space.

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Customer Reviews

4 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Sturgeon's moving yet imperfect first novel, 26 Aug 2003
By Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Dreaming Jewels (Paperback)
The Dreaming Jewels (also published under the title The Synthetic Man) is the first novel by Theodore Sturgeon, one of science fiction's most legendary writers. Sturgeon had already found success publishing short stories by 1950, but this first novel proved he could sustain longer fictional pieces without losing his vintage magic. The Dreaming Jewels is by no means a perfect novel, but it does showcase Sturgeon's remarkable talent for humanizing his stories and thus focusing his literary microscope on humanity and its proper place in society. Science fiction as a genre can, in general, be criticized for a coldness and overemphasis on science rather than people, but Sturgeon clearly had a special gift for delving into the hearts of his fictional creations.

The main character of the novel is a boy named Horty. Sturgeon delivers a sometimes heartbreaking description of the little fellow's life. Orphaned as a baby, he spent time in an orphanage before being taken in (for all the wrong reasons) by a horrible judge and his weak-willed wife. All he really has in life is an old jack-in-the-box, the eyes of which consist of two remarkable crystals. As the novel opens, Horty has been caught eating ants underneath the school bleachers; here is your first clue that Horty is not your typical kid. His guardians, never kind and caring at the best of times, are furious, and the ensuing dramatic confrontation ends with Horty running away, leaving three severed fingers behind. He sneaks on to a carnival truck and finds himself living happily, disguised as a girl for reasons the novel makes plain, among a host of strange but caring "outsider" type of people. During his stay of several years, his severed fingers grow back and he does not grow at all, further clues that he is not a normal human child. The owner of the carnival is a rather vicious fellow out to destroy humanity with a source of crystal power he researches and experiments with obsessively. Eventually, all of the people Horty has known, both the good and the bad, come together for an inevitable confrontation. Horty can only survive by figuring out exactly who and what he really is.

The relationships between Horty and his carnival friends are really quite touching, and the evil of those who would use or abuse Horty is equally disturbing. Sturgeon can put an incredible amount of emotion into the shortest of sentences, and the reader definitely becomes emotionally involved in the story. One of the problems with The Dreaming Jewels, though, concerns the nature of the important crystals described in the story and the means by which they can provide power to anyone who can truly communicate with them. Some of the mystery is stripped away in the first few pages of the novel, although the small reference I refer to could be overlooked by the casual reader. The fantasy elements, in the end, just come off as slightly absurd. This does nothing to rob the novel of its immense human warmth, but it did have a somewhat negative impact on my reading of the book.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, 26 April 2002
By W. G. Hardy "gaz_23" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This was the first Theodore Sturgeon I read, so I had no expectations of it.
This is an interesting yarn about a small orphan boy - Horty, who runs away from (his adopted) home and joins a carnival with more than it's fair share of 'freaks'. The only thing he owns is a jack-in-the-box called Junky, which has been with him as a baby.
There are reasons why there are such a high proportion of freaks with this carnival, and why Junky is so important to Horty. This is all explained quite matter-of-factly, without interrupting the flow of a fast moving story.

A good entertaining read, and I'm looking forward to reading his "More Than Human" at some point in the near future.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Great Afternoon Reading, 22 May 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: The Dreaming Jewels (Paperback)
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.
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