Richard E. Lowe 15 min read

In the year 3896, at a University two thousand years old, two professors who can't agree on the fundamentals of child behavior meet little Herbux, who changes everything.

Richard E. Lowe's 1954 story is a wry psi-powers and social-SF tale. Clever, fun golden-age SF. Read it for a genial story where academic theories about children collide with an extraordinary child, in a light, well-turned golden-age piece set in a vast far-future university, that finds comedy and wonder in the gap between learned theory and living genius.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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