Hampdenshire Wonder

In this pioneering science-fictional treatment of superhuman intelligence, a mutant wonder child's insights prove devastating.

Science fiction luminary Ted Chiang introduces The Hampdenshire Wonder, one of the genre's first treatments of superhuman intelligence. Victor Stott is a large-headed supernormal mutated in the womb by his parents' desire to have a child born without habits. Known as the Wonder, Victor surveys humankind's science, philosophy, history, literature, religion--the best that has been thought and said--and dismisses it brutally: So elementary . . . inchoate . . . a disjunctive patchwork. Rejecting the interposing and utterly false concepts of space and time, the Wonder claims that life itself is merely a disease of the ether. Unable to deal with the child's disenchanting insights, his adult interlocutors seek to silence him . . . perhaps permanently.