Overview
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.
J.D. Beresford (1873–1947) was an English dramatist, journalist, and author. A great admirer of H.G. Wells, he published the first critical study of Wells's scientific romances in 1915. In addition to The Hampdenshire Wonder (1911), an early and influential proto-sf novel about super-intelligence, his genre novels include A World of Women (1913), Revolution (1921), and The Riddle of the Tower (1944, with Esmé Wynne-Tyson).
This book title, The Hampdenshire Wonder, ISBN: 9780262551410, by J. D. Beresford, Ted Chiang, published by MIT Press (March 4, 2025) is available in paperback. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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