Mighty Whitey: The book both subverts and plays this straight.Mercy Kill: John claims that he only kills people for this reason.May–December Romance: John briefly has an affair with a woman much older than him during his teenage years.Gadgeteer Genius: John and the other children.Evolutionary Levels: Odd John is one of a new species of supermen who happen to be born here and there around the world at roughly the same time.Differently Powered Individual: Possibly the ur-example of the name Homo Superior, which has since been used everywhere from pulp sci-fi to Marvel Comics to The Tomorrow People (1973) to refer to superhumans as the " next stage of evolution".Character Filibuster: A lot of the novel is devoted to John's sardonic speeches about the flaws of humanity, which tend to go on for pages.The Baby that Ng-Gunko was taking care of is apparently smarter than all of the children and despite being only being a year old, can already talk and hold a conversation.Author Appeal: As with many Stapledon protagonists, the main character is a communist.Not related to the Odd Thomas series by Dean Koontz. Then things start to go horribly wrong for John as the world starts to find out the truth about him. John is not like most people from his birth he displays tremendous intelligence - for example, at age four he has already mastered the English language and mathematics and becomes able to see into n-dimensional space.Īs John slowly matures into adulthood, he commits several murders, sells various inventions worth millions of dollars, becomes a communist, slowly loses his grip on humanity, and starts to display Psychic Powers.Įventually John becomes convinced that there is no place for him in the world with regular people and starts seeking various others like himself from all over the globe to live in peace on a remote island. The book follows John Wainwright through the entire period of his life. Odd John is a 1935 Science Fiction novel by British writer Olaf Stapledon which explores the theme of the Übermensch.
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