Mutant

by Henry Kuttner

People called them BALDIES!
...a race of mutants, hairless with egg-like skulls and lashless eyes...
...a race hated by normal human beings, who hunted them with animal ferocity and killed them with religious fervour...
...a race that was even split amongst itself with some that wanted to establish rule by mutants...
...a race that had an extraordinary talent, the powers of telepathy!
So the baldies disguised themselves with wigs and waited for the day when there would be enough of them to stop their persecution by normal men !

Genres: Science Fiction, Novels

210 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1953

About the author

Henry Kuttner was, alone and in collaboration with his wife, the great science fiction and fantasy writer C.L. Moore, one of the four or five most important writers of the 1940s, the writer whose work went furthest in its sociological and psychological insight to making science fiction a human as well as technological literature. He was an important influence upon every contemporary and every science fiction writer who succeeded him. In the early 1940s and under many pseudonyms, Kuttner and Moore published very widely through the range of the science fiction and fantasy pulp markets.

Their fantasy novels, all of them for the lower grade markets like Future, Thrilling Wonder, and Planet Stories, are forgotten now; their science fiction novels, Fury and Mutant, are however well regarded. There is no question but that Kuttner's talent lay primarily in the shorter form; Mutant is an amalgamation of five novelettes and Fury, his only true science fiction novel, is considered as secondary material. There are, however, 40 or 50 shorter works which are among the most significant achievements in the field and they remain consistently in print. The critic James Blish, quoting a passage from Mutant about the telepathic perception of the little blank, silvery minds of goldfish, noted that writing of this quality was not only rare in science fiction but rare throughout literature: "The Kuttners learned a few thing writing for the pulp magazines, however, that one doesn't learn reading Henry James."

In the early 1950s, Kuttner and Moore, both citing weariness with writing, even creative exhaustion, turned away from science fiction; both obtained undergraduate degrees in psychology from the University of Southern California and Henry Kuttner, enrolled in an MA program, planned to be a clinical psychologist. A few science fiction short stories and novelettes appeared (Humpty Dumpty finished the Baldy series in 1953). Those stories -- Home There Is No Returning, Home Is the Hunter, Two-Handed Engine, and Rite of Passage -- were at the highest level of Kuttner's work. He also published three mystery novels with Harper & Row (of which only the first is certainly his; the other two, apparently, were farmed out by Kuttner to other writers when he found himself incapable of finishing them).

Henry Kuttner died suddenly in his sleep, probably from a stroke, in February 1958; Catherine Moore remarried a physician and survived him by almost three decades but she never published again. She remained in touch with the science fiction community, however, and was Guest of Honor at the World Convention in Denver in 198l. She died of complications of Alzheimer's Disease in 1987.

His pseudonyms include:

Edward J. Bellin
Paul Edmonds
Noel Gardner
Will Garth
James Hall
Keith Hammond
Hudson Hastings
Peter Horn
Kelvin Kent
Robert O. Kenyon
C. H. Liddell
Hugh Maepenn
Scott Morgan
Lawrence O'Donnell
Lewis Padgett
Woodrow Wilson Smith
Charles Stoddard

Reviews

[Sandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

By the early 1950s, the great husband-and-wife writing team of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore had moved to the West Coast to acquire degrees at the University of Southern California, and were concentrating more on their scholastic pursuits than their (formerly prodigious) sci-fi/fantasy output. In 1953, the pair released "Mutant," which would turn out to be their final, novel-length work of science fiction as a team. "Mutant" is what is known as a "fix-up novel," consisting of four short stories originally published in 1945 and a final story released in 1953, cobbled together with some interlinking material. Taken as a whole, the book is another great achievement for the pair; a wonderfully well-written, thought-provoking, multigenerational piece of hard sci-fi.

"Mutant" tells the story of the Baldies, a population of telepathic, hairless (natch) humans that has been created as a result of hard radiations following the so-called Blowup. Distrusted and feared by the nontelepathic majority, their lot is indeed a hard one, despite their obvious advantages. The authors have seemingly given much thought to the question of what it must be like to be a mind reader, and many aspects of the telepathic society (their dueling customs, relations with nontelepaths, their alloted occupations, intermarriage, etc.) are examined in some detail. Kuttner and Moore, using italicized type and bracketed paragraphs, effectively convey telepathic conversations amongst several people; one of the book's major strengths, I feel, and this years before Alfred Bester achieved a similar feat in his 1953 masterpiece "The Demolished Man." Each of the novel's five sections is a concise little gem, and each tells the story of one of the "Key Lives" in Baldy history. "The Piper's Son" (which first appeared in "Astounding Science-Fiction" in February '45) introduces us to Al Burkhalter, a Baldy who works as a semantics expert at a publishing firm and is starting to have trouble with his arrogant Baldy son. "Three Blind Mice" ("Astounding," June '45) tells the story of Dave Barton, a Baldy field biologist who uses his powers to study animals in the wild. (Ever wonder what it's like to read the mind of a shark, a rabbit or a goldfish? This is the book for you!) Barton is here given the assignment of tracking down and killing three Baldy Paranoids, a subset of the mutant population that does not want to live peaceably with the nontelepaths, but rather to exterminate them. Barton returns (40 years older and more experienced in his fight against the Paranoids) in "The Lion and the Unicorn" ("Astounding," July '45), and here makes contact with a young Baldy who has been living with a group of nontelepathic, nomadic pioneer sorts, the Hedgehounds. This tale also deals with a Baldy scientist who is working desperately to counter the Paranoids' secret telepathic bandwidth. In "Beggars in Velvet" ("Astounding," December '45), Burkhalter's grandson must deal with a pogrom that the Paranoids have instigated against the Baldies in a small town in the former British Columbia; a pogrom that has the dire potential to spread worldwide. Finally, in "Humpty Dumpty" ("Astounding," September '53), we are shown the efforts of the Baldy scientists who are endeavoring to find a means of inducing telepathy mechanically and making the secret available to all humans.

In each of these tales, the Baldy minority may be seen as representative of any minority of your choice (Jews, blacks, you name it), and the desperate efforts of the Baldies against the Paranoid troublemakers and the hostile nontelepaths are shown in a very positive light by the authors...even when cold-blooded killing becomes necessary, as it often does. Thus, "Mutant" turns out to be not only an exciting and wonderfully well-thought-out piece of work, but a socially relevant one as well. How nice to know that Kuttner and Moore, in their final book together, once again smacked one right out of the park! Though the rest of the 1950s saw the team produce several sci-fi short stories, and a very fine solo novel from Moore (1957's "Doomsday Morning"), as well as a detective series from Kuttner featuring psychoanalyst Michael Gray, "Mutant" essentially drew the curtain down on their sci-fi-novel collaboration. Kuttner, sadly, succumbed to a heart attack in early 1958, when he was only 44 years old. It is my earnest hope that the recent release of the big-budget Hollywood film "The Last Mimzy," based on Kuttner's famous 1943 short story "Mimsy Were the Borogoves," will serve to stimulate a fresh interest in these two pillars of Golden Age science fiction.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fans of X-Men should read this one. While the mutants in this book only fall in the telepathy category, the conflict of non-mutants, mutants who want to co-exist with the humans, and the mutants who want to rule the humans is very well done.

[Иван Величков · Rating 3 out of 5]

Едно от най-високо ценените фантастични произведения на семейство Кътнър. Формата е мозаичен роман (някак не ми се услажда терминът фикс-ъп), съставен от пет разказа. Първите четири са писани 1945, а последния и най-обичан от феновете през 53-та, след като и двамата са завършили вече психология, което си личи много.

Действието в разказите обхваща около век. Началото е непосредствено след Втората Световна Война, където употребата на атомно оръжие е променила коренно социума. Големи те градове са унищожени, човечеството се е разделило на по-малки, тясно специализирани според индустрията общности, паричната система е изместена от разменна, дуелите се използват вместо правораздавна и наказателна системи.
По-голямата промяна ообаче се случва в следствие на твърдата радиация от атомните „яйца”. Малка част от човечеството развива телепатични способности. Познават се по липсата на окосмение и са доста трудно приемани в обществото.
Историята проследява няколко поколения телепати и започва когато откриват първия „параноик” – мутация в мутацията, която се изразява с психични отклонения, водещи до мания за величие и омраза към не-мутантите. Разказите проследяват борбата между опитващата се да се слее с обществото малцинствена група и по-малкия, но силно агресивен социум в социума. Финалът предлага доста елегантно решение на расовия проблем.

При такова емблематично за жанра произведение, няма как да не се впусна в леки разсъждения и сравнения.

На примависта няма как да не намеся „Градът” на Саймък и то, не само заради формата. Кътнър също е съвременик на Втората Световна и тя силно е повлияла на произведението. За разлика от Саймък семейство Кътнър не са тотално разочаровани от човечеството и предлагат решение на проблемите на съвремието си. Други сходни елементи са децентрализацията и хеликоптерите като масово средство за придвижване.
Следващото сравнение трябва да е със „Слен” на ван Вогт, заради проявленията на „супер сили” за създаване на нова раса. За разлика от повлияните от дианетиката решения на Вогт, сем. Кътнър предлагат доста по-хуманни и елегантни решения.
Третото е „Времето на дъжда” от братя Стругацки, което ми резонира с последния разказ от цикъла на Кътнър, а име3нно ще се реши ли човечевството да подложи на промяна децата си, правейки ги по-различни от родителите. За разлика от братятя, тук сем. Кътнър виждат положителен изход.
На края трябва да спомена влиянието на „Мутант” върху комиксите за „Екс-мен”, където идеите и конфликтите са пренесени почти буквално, а професор Екзейвиър и конфликтът му с идеологията на Магнито са директен продукт на кътнаровите телепати и параноици.

Произведението е силно повлияно от Втората световна война. Идеята за нова господстваща раса, желанието за унищожение на унтерменшите, използването на стари фолклорни елементи за изграждане на господстваща идеология, затваряне на част от човечеството в нещо като лагер, използване на атомно оръжие и страха от него за подтискане на конфликти. Всичко това е пряко следствие от времената, когато е писана книгата.
Няма да ми стане любимата фантастика, няма и да ми стане люимата книга от Кътнър, но определено не съжалявам ,че я прочетох, а в контекста на времето в което е писана смятам, че е задължителна за четене.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kuttner, Henry. Mutant. 1953. E-book ed., Gateway, 2013.
A nuclear exchange has created a viable mutation of hairless telepaths called “Baldies.” Mutant, by Henry Kuttner, describes the Baldies as a self-conscious minority community, most of whom wear wigs in public to hide their telepathy. They feel superior to non-telepaths, but they know they are feared and perhaps envied by non-telepaths. These themes are as timely as ever, but the stories are also creatures of their time. One can imagine them as episodes on Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock. They share some themes with A.E. van Vogt’s Slan (1940), and they look forward to such works as Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” (1961). Mutant, a “fix-up” novel based on short stories that appeared first in Astounding, was originally published under the pseudonym “Lewis Padgett,” a name often used for works Kuttner co-authored with his wife, C. L. Moore. Later editions are usually attributed to Kuttner alone. It is still worth a read. 4 stars.

[SciFiOne · Rating 3 out of 5]

1983 grade B+
2017 Grade C

I cannot recommend this book. It contains five individual episodes with repeating characters or history covering the integration of mind reading mutants into the “normal' population over a period of about 100 years. The stories are bound together by six very short stitching pieces of a future event. The concept and characters are interesting but the prose is much too out of date. The writing style is tedious and repetitive. I'm sure some of the repetition comes from the individual stories first being published separately which does require background information. But it was a difficult read in book form and hard to speed read. Not recommended.

Balantine Bal-Hi U2859

[Nathan Shumate · Rating 4 out of 5]

A "fix-up" novel of several of Kuttner's short stories about a specific mutation in a post-nuclear American civilization -- the "Baldies," who in addition to being bald (duh), are also psychic. The peaceful majority of Baldies try to fit in with normal humans in non-threatening ways, but a violent minority consider themselves the next step in evolution, so the peaceful Baldies have to keep the violent ones in check to keep the normals from exterminating them all... Sound familiar? It's pretty much acknowledged that Stan Lee borrowed heavily from the premise when he was creating The X-Men.

[Xabi1990 · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10. De las primeras obras que leí con la famosa pregunta de qué pasaría si aparecieses mutantes, o post-humanos o como queráis llamarlo. Bajo la apariencia de una novela simple y con trama ligera siempre se esconde esa pregunta.
Hasta en los Marvel subyace esa cuestión, envuelta en efectos especiales y acción a raudales (X-Men no va mas que de eso, hasta son pesadito con el tema). Pero como este fue leído en mis comienzos, pues me impactó bastante.

[Pistache QuiKraque · Rating 4 out of 5]

Comment vivre dans un monde complètement bouleversé par les guerres atomiques qui ont littéralement changé les humain.es et certaines de leur faculté psychique. Vivre en communauté et s'entre tuer ?

[blake · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of five stories from Astounding Science Fiction about telepaths stitched together with a framing story about a man lost in the wilderness, who recalls them as a way to stave off hopelessness.

The first thing I have to note is that, years ago, I read all the ASFs from about 1938 to 1954. I have no recollection of these stories. I'm not sure what that says about these stories, or (more likely) me.

Basically, these are post-apocalyptic stories, where The Big Blowup has caused the decentralization of society: We're in America, but America is all small towns, each with specialized economic functions. Each town has a stock of "eggs", which is some sort of atomic weapon, and it's a trivial matter to deploy these eggs to any town that gets too big.

Amongst the regular population have sprouted some "Baldies", mutants who are telepaths and who therefore live (as a minority) very low-key lives in the concern that the normies will wipe 'em out. They're called "Baldies" because the mutant also means they don't grow hair anywhere on their bodies.

Although, at first, I didn't think these stories were going to be particularly noteworthy. By the third story, I couldn't help but observe that the sort of "bloodless" writing style of that era's sci-fi wasn't really up to adequately conveying the emotional state that was frequently described over and over again. You know, like an author writing about ice cream by saying, "It's delicious. They all enjoyed the delicious ice cream. There was no way to describe the ice cream's deliciousness."

And it's definitely true that the whole telepathy thing is a little slippery. I think because it was based on fairly typical Freudian ideas of the mind. So, like, telepaths can read each other's minds, but they can also put up barriers, but the barriers are mostly respected out of politeness, but people can be fooled by putting up surface thoughts, etc.

In other words, telepathy here ranges conceptually from a mere speaking replacement to something more profound, and as the story seems to require.

In spite of that, the last two stories really build on what the first three created. The Baldies' big dilemma is that they live on the edge: If they do well, they'll provoke envy in the normies who outnumber them tremendously. They're always on the verge of a worldwide pogrom. In time, the telepathy gene would spread and dominate, but the fly in that particular ointment is a group of Baldies called "paranoids", who exist solely to exterminate the non-mutants.

And, yeah, it's the premise of the X-men, many years before they were created (and it wasn't all that new in the '40s when this was written).

Anyway, the Paranoids are constantly working on ways to disrupt the normal world because they figure telepaths could dominate if they could cut non-humans' communication networks to the point where they could get them to dust off the others' cities with eggs.

Unlike a lot of similar collections, then, this one really does end up with a shape, even if the stories do take place over a century or so with different characters, and it wraps up in a fairly satisfying way. For that, I bumped it up from three to four stars.

[Danahe Arellano · Rating 5 out of 5]

LO AMEEEE POR COMPLETO,magnifico libro, de lectura ligera con muy buenos dialogos y magnifico contenido, solo puedo decir que quiero un inductor!!!!

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book, that I expect was originally a series of short stories from 1945. If my suspicions are correct, it was put together into a near-brilliant story of prejudice and little steps toward tyranny by adding a framing story about a telepath (a “Baldy” in the lingo of the story) trying to escape a final pogrom. Against whom, though, we don’t find out until the end.

After a nuclear exchange that destroys all major cities, at least in the United States, two things change our civilization: first, people become deathly afraid of any population center growing enough to become a nation-state that might start another nuclear exchange. And in this world, the graphs of destruction have already passed the point where it is very easy for anyone to acquire nuclear bombs, which means that any time some population center starts pushing its neighbors around too much, some random person chooses to fly a copter over it and drop a bomb.

And, of all the deadly mutations caused by the original war, one was survivable: some people have telepathy, and it breeds true. This mutation pairs with hairlessness, which makes it very easy to tell who is telepathic and who isn’t. Because the number of Baldies is very small, the individuals with this mutation are very powerful, but the population with it is very weak.

The story is told from the perspective of the Baldies, watching an inevitable pogrom take shape while trying to stop it in morally dubious ways.

It’s very good. The only failing is that each story, having originally been separate, repeats stuff we already know about the world instead of adding onto it.

[Dominick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic telepath novel--or, more precisely, fix=up linking several short stories. It does suffer somewhat from that structure, in that Kuttner didn't bother to clean up the stories, removing information necessary in stories published separately but redundant when repeated in every single blessed one of them. On the other hand, the book is overall an early attempt to treat seriously the idea of telepathy and what effect such a mutation might have on social development. Kuttner perhaps oversimplifies with his tow categories of Baldy (so named because all telepaths are also completely hairless), the so-called normal ones, and the paranoid ones, who believe themselves superior to regular humans and plan to wipe them out. Narrating everything from the point of view of the Baldys does help with the agenda of requiring readers to consider an alien point of view, easily transferrable to other out-groups (e.g. the novel pretty clearly uses the Baldy/human conflict as a stand-in for other sorts of discrimination, even going so far as to designate human attempts to wipe out the telepaths as pogroms). Each story is reasonably cleverly constructed, and Kuttner has some interesting, if idealistic ideas about how telepathy might influence human culture, tempered by a pretty hard-eyed recognition of just how nasty conflicts can become (even the "normal" Baldys are willing to consider wiping out humans, if necessary). Though not palatable to twenty-first century tastes in what it has to say about subjects such as heritage, this is an important Golden Age SF classic, well worth the read.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting concept related to superiority/inferiority complexes, race wars and their implications, as well as ideas about what it might be like to be able to read minds through telepathy gained from nuclear fallout. Pretty cool that it was written in the cold war era, but suggests releasing a virus in order to kill off 90% of humanity. Here we are in 2020.

[Juan Mesa · Rating 3 out of 5]

El tema de como reacciona una sociedad a una mutación hace pensar en la extinción del Neardental, el libro se desarrolla sobre la especie "victoriosa". Es un libro gris, nunca aborda desde los protagonistas Homo Sapiens y solo mira desde los "calvos". Siempre hay espacio para analizar la evolución de homo sapiens, ya sea biológica o .....

[Greg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty typical of golden age sci-fi: Interesting concept of telepathy struggling to get the rest of society to evolve along with them. But a complete lack of characterization or compelling narrative structure.

[Cheryl]

I enjoyed the piece of it called The Piper's Son very much.

[Christopher Heckman · Rating 3 out of 5]

"It scared you so much, you buried it in the backyard" went the advertisement I saw a few years ago for some book website. Not really all that scary, though.

[in8 · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://5cense.com/20/724.htm

[Louisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Telepathic mutants are the future of humanity, for the low low cost of complete hairlessness (and the fear and hatred of normal humans).

This is really a collection of the five "Baldy" stories, slightly edited and joined together by framing sections to make a more complete whole. The setting is a future USA recovering from nuclear war (the first story is from 1945 [Hiroshima, Nagasaki] and the war was dated 1950). A small number of people have mutated from the fallout, getting telepathic powers that -- quite frankly -- make them superior to ordinary Homo saps. But not all is wonderful, since some mutants are paranoid (the bad guys) and others are insane.

The series/collection describe how the good mutants deal with their bad relations while trying to stay safe from the majority of (normal) humanity, who are scared of their telepathic powers. Well, it can strain any relationship if every single thought you have is broadcast to your partners and neighbours. Anti-telepath pogroms always loom just over the hill.

[Rog Harrison · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was written by Henry Kuttner and Catherine L Moore and published in 1953. Set in the USA following an atomic war telepaths (the mutants of the title) struggle to co-exist with "normal" humans. Each chapter deals with the story of a different key telepath over the previous 200 years. The framing device is the thoughts of an accident victim who thinks he may be dying. I had not read this book before but I am certain I had read at least one of the chapters before probably in an anthology of science fiction short stories in the late 1960s or early 1970s. (Memory playing tricks again, actually I had read this book in 1976.)

Although a bit dated by twenty first century standards this stands up well as the authors are good writers.

My edition was in an omnibus with with "Fury" and "The best of Henry Kuttner".

[Raja99 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fixup of 5 Baldy stories with an interstitial framing story set in the far future. Damon Knight, in his SF criticism collection In Search of Wonder, complained that the framing story removed any effort on the reader's part; I sympathized until I reached the powerful final segment.

This book suffers a bit from the huge number of people who've ripped it off since then (I'm looking at you, Marvel Comics X-Men).

[H. Gibson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chronicles of Han Storm Book Club Read (Science Fiction)

Although considered a good, thought provoking book by those members who read it, it was stated that the story line could have been expanded on considerably. My personal opinion is that comparisons have been drawn between other books. I really liked this story.

[Kenneth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a post-apocalyptic tale - actually a collection of stories originally published separately - tht is set in an America after a nuclear holocaust. There were mutants being born who were bald, and they were telepathic. Of course conflict arose, and so we have the stories.

[DMS · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://dms.booklikes.com/post/382202/...

[Ana Abel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesante especulación sobre las consecuencias sociales del desarrollo de la telepatía por una parte de la población. El final tiene mucha fuerza.

[Fugo Feedback]

Lo arranqué, me gustó, lo intercalé con otras lecturas, lo largué... Y al día de hoy todavía no lo retomé. Y eso que digo que me gusta la ciencia ficción...

[Edgar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant.

[Ellis Knox · Rating 2 out of 5]

Typical of older-style science fiction in which the plot overshadows the characters. The concept was mildly interesting but mostly I just forced myself through the book.

[Dony Grayman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Libro amigo ciencia ficción #70

[bluetyson]

Mutant by Henry Kuttner