When he takes his motley crew of mutants to found their experimental colony in the South Pacific, they ruthlessly compel the natives already living on the island to climb up on a huge pyre and expire, their bodies burnt away. This is more realistic, I suppose, than the altruistic supermen who fight for the mankind which scorns them, but it is unsettling to read unless you're expecting a horror story.Īside from the policeman he cold-bloodedly stabs to death (the ten-year-old John had been committing burglaries in the neighborhood to gather some capital), our protagonist kills a number of people who get in his way, with no sign of remorse or regret. From childhood on, he uses his enhanced intelligence and telepathic powers to manipulate and experiment on people with no regard for their welfare. John Wainright is, from a normal human viewpoint, a monster. Years of reading other science-fiction books like SLAN and Henry Kuttner's 'Baldy' stories (not to mention Marvel Comic's X-MEN*) had led me to expect a tale of a noble young mutant unfairly oppressed by a heartless humanity and only fighting back when forced to. Which isn't saying much, as John calls the slavishly devoted helper 'Fido' and treats him badly throughout.įor this is what surprised and slightly distressed me about ODD JOHN. He acts as a foster uncle and accomplice to the arrogant young superman, and is as close to a human friend as John can have. The story is told by an unnamed man who once was in love with John's mother and who remained a friend of the family. I know also how John and all his followers died.'Īfter putting all that in the fourth paragraph, Stapledon then fills out the events of John's career in great detail, with a sense of inevitable tragedy hanging over every phase.

'I know that he never walked until he was six, that before he was ten he committed several burglaries and killed a policeman, that at eighteen, when he still looked like a young boy, he founded his preposterous colony in the South Seas, and that at twenty-three, in appearance but little altered, he outwitted the six warships that six Great Powers had sent to seize him.

On the very first page, the narrator gives us a summary of John Wainright's life, so I think this absolves me from having to use Spoiler warnings. It's well-written by Olaf Stapledon but quite unpleasant and, well, ODD. From 1936, this is one of the earliest 'mental superman' books.

Odd john stapledon