Charles V. De Vet 20 min read

He was born with strange and wonderful powers, but the world was not yet ready to accept them, and the world kills what it does not understand.

Charles V. De Vet's 1957 story opens on a blond boy alone on a hill, breathing the morning, and builds a poignant tale of a gifted outsider. Thoughtful, melancholy psi-powered SF. Read it for a moving story about a mutant whose gifts arrive before a world that can bear them.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

20 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller