The Apprentice Bastard

by Benedict Freedman

"Ludmilla," Skip drawled lazily, "is the most remarkable invention of our time. The perfect sex machine. The quintessence. She was designed, Farnham. Engineered, blueprinted, constructed. And when I say constructed, I mean built!
They introduced her to sex as just another sort of exercise like horseback riding. And they saw to it that she never picked up any wrong notions from the outside world. No novels, newspapers, gossip, anything like that, to give her any idea that there was anything wrong about it, or anything right either, for that matter.
You understand what you've got to go through with a woman, even the greatest of them? You got to hock your life, put your soul on the line. You got tears, you got jealousy, spending your money, drinking your booze, you got children houses, jobs, lousy dinners, debts...do I need to draw you a picture? Here, in this miraculous concept, you've got it pure and simple. No drawbacks, no problems. It's bigger than television!"

391 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 1966

About the author

Benedict Freedman, the son and grandson of writers, was born in New York City in 1919. While in high school he studied accelerated courses for gifted boys and graduated with a medal for mathematics. At fourteen he entered Columbia University as a premed student, but had to drop out at sixteen because of his father's sudden death. For a time Benedict continued private study of higher mathematics. Freedman’s chief interest was in games and recreational mathematics, but he also assisted in writing a textbook and worked on actuarial problems as clerk to a consulting actuary.