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Book description

This is the strange tale of Horty, a little boy who ran away from home and took refuge in the bizarre world of the carnival. With him went his favourite toy - an old jack-in-the-box whose jewelled eyes sparkled and shone, hypnotic in their brilliance. And among the freaks and oddities of the sideshows he found friends - 'jewel' people like him, who tried to protect him from the terrible secret of his existence . Theodore Sturgeon (1918 - 1985) Theodore Sturgeon was born Edward Hamilton Waldo in New York City in 1918. Sturgeon was not a pseudonym; his name was legally changed after his parents' divorce. After selling his first SF story to Astounding in 1939, he travelled for some years, only returning in earnest in 1946. He produced a great body of acclaimed short fiction (SF's premier short story award is named in his honour) as well as a number of novels, including More Than Human, which was awarded the 1954 retro-Hugo in 2004. In addition to coining Sturgeon's Law - '90% of everything is crud' - he wrote the screenplays for seminal Star Trek episodes 'Shore Leave' and 'Amok Time', inventing the famous Vulcan mating ritual, the pon farr.