J. D. Beresford 4 hr 14 min read

Ginger Stott, a famous cricketer, wills his infant son to be a genius, and the boy, born with a vast, terrible intelligence far beyond any human, gazes on ordinary people as we might gaze on insects.

J. D. Beresford's 1911 novel is a landmark of science fiction, the first great tale of the superhuman child. Thoughtful, unsettling, hugely influential. Read it for the foundational super-child story, a boy whose towering intellect isolates him utterly from humankind, exploring, decades ahead of its time, the loneliness of the truly other.

In its time

Published in 1911, during the 1910s, lost worlds and interplanetary adventure.

Reading it

4 hr 14 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).