Eight-year-old Horty Bluett is mocked by his classmates and abused by his adoptive parents until the day his father severs three of his fingers. He runs away, taking only a gem-eyed doll he calls Junky, and joins a carnival. Finding acceptance at last, Horty never dreams that Junky is more than a toy, nor does he realize that a threat far greater than his cruel father inhabits the carnival and has been searching for Horty longer than he has been alive. Though less well-known than Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, or Robert A. Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon (1918-1985) is even more important to the development of literary and humanistic science fiction. He received the Hugo, Nebula, and International Fantasy Awards, and the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award. The Dreaming Jewels (1950) was his first novel. --Cynthia Ward