In this pioneering science-fictional treatment of superhuman intelligence, a mutant wonder child’s insights prove devastating.

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.