The New Adam by Stanley G. Weinbaum

Book Details

The New Adam – How does a man who has evolved, live and love in this world? And as Homo Sapiens replaced Cro-Magnon, will he replace us?

The New Adam – Edmond was to man as man is to the apes, but there was only man’s world in which to live— and love!
Chapter I Dawn on Olympus
Chapter II Morning on Olympus
Chapter III Introspection
Chapter IV Traffic with Nature
Chapter V Commerce
Chapter VI Market
Chapter VII The Seed of Power
Chapter VIII Friendship and Humor
Chapter IX The Study of Man
Chapter X Guinea Pig
Chapter XI Lucifer
Chapter XII The Brief Pursuit of Power
Chapter XIII The Seed Planted
Chapter XIV The Seed Sprouts
Chapter XV The Plant Flowers
Chapter XVI Jupiter and Leda

Part Two—Conclusion – Love came to Edmond Hall, but to him it was death and to Vanny it meant awful visions and madness.
Chapter XVII Fruition
Chapter XVIII Olympian Love
Chapter XIX A Honeymoon of Dream
Chapter XX Old Eve
Chapter XXI Old Eve Rebels
Chapter XXII The Apple in Eden
Chapter XXIII Conversation on Olympus
Chapter XXIV Satan
Chapter XXV Lilith and Adam
Chapter XXVI Eve and Lilith
Chapter XXVII The Loss of Beauty
Chapter XXVIII In Which Edmond Refuses Longer to Follow His Fancy
Chapter XXIX Edmond Again Follows His Fancy
Chapter XXX Return to Olympus
Chapter XXXI Sarah
Chapter XXXII Diminuendo
Chapter XXXIII Evening on Olympus
Chapter XXXIV Night on Olympus

Stanley Grauman Weinbaum’s (1902–1935) first story, “A Martian Odyssey“, was published to great acclaim in July 1934, but he died from lung cancer less than a year and a half later.

Weinbaum was born in Louisville, Kentucky. He attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison in Madison, first as a chemical engineering major but later switching to English. On a bet, Weinbaum took an exam for a friend, and was later discovered; he left the university in 1923 and did not graduate.

The New Adam was published posthumously in 1943.

The New Adam has 6 illustrations.

Files:

1. TheNewAdam.epub

Excerpt: The New Adam

Chapter I

Dawn on Olympus

ANNA HALL died as stolidly as she had lived, died unimaginatively in childbirth; and was perhaps spared some maternal pangs, for her strange son lived. Nor did grim middle-aged John Hall waste his emotional strength in either futile regrets or useless recriminations of the child. This business of living was a stern, pitiless affair; one took what befell and did not argue. He accepted the infant, and named it after his own father, old Edmond.

It must have been a rare accident of genes and determinants that produced Edmond Hall—a spindly infant, straight-legged from birth, with oddly light eyes. Yet his strangest abnormality, one that set brisk Doctor Lindquist muttering, was his hands, his tiny slim fingers, for each of these possessed an extra joint. He clenched his three-knuckled thumb against his four-knuckled fingers into a curious little fist, and stared tearlessly with yellowish gray gaze.

“She would not have a hospital,” Doctor Lindquist was muttering. “This is what comes of home births.” One doubted that he meant only Anna’s demise; his eyes were on her son.

John Hall said nothing; there was little, indeed, that he could say. Without cavil and in grim acceptance of little Edmond, he did what was to be done; he arranged for a nurse to care for the child, and returned somberly to his law practice. John was a good lawyer, industrious, methodical, earnest, and successful.

After a while he took to addressing the child. It was as quiet and possibly as understanding as Anna. Queer little brat! Tearless, almost voiceless, with eyes beginning to show peculiarly amber. It gurgled occasionally; he never heard it cry. So he talked to it by evenings, sending the nurse away glad enough for the moments of liberty. She was puzzled by the little whelp; abnormal hands, abnormal mind, she thought; probably imbecilic. Nevertheless, she was kind enough, in a competent, professional manner. The child began to recognize her presence; she was his refuge and source of comfort. Perhaps this thin, dark, nervous maternal substitute influenced the infant more than he was ever to realize.

John was startled when the child’s eyes began to focus. He swung his watch before it; the pale eyes followed the movement with an intensity of gaze more kitten-like than human. A wide, unwinking stare. Sometimes they looked straight into John’s own eyes; the little being’s gaze was so curiously intent that he was a trifle startled.

TIME passed quietly, uneventfully. Now little Edmond was observing his immediate world with a half purposeful expression; now he was grasping at objects with his odd hands. They were agile little hands, unusually apt at seizing what was within their reach. The fingers closed like small tentacles about John’s swinging watch, and tugged it, strangely and precociously, not toward the thin-lipped mouth, but before the eyes for examination.

And time dragged on. John gave up his office in the Loop, moving it to his home on Kenmore. He installed a desk in the living room, and a wall telephone; just as good as being downtown, he thought, and it saved the street car ride. He had the house wired for electric light; everybody was abandoning the hot gas-burners. His practice was well-established, and clients quickly learned of his new business quarters. And at this time a new company was being formed to manufacture gasoline automobiles; he bought a few shares as a speculation, believing the devices due for a wave of popularity. And the “L” nosed northward block by block. This was Chicago of the first decade, sprawling in its mud and glitter. No seer nor sorcerer whispered that the young city had spawned an egg whose maturity was as yet inconceivable.

The child Edmond was speaking a few words now. “Light,” he said, when the yellow carbon-filament flashed on. He toddled around the office, learned the sound of the telephone bell. His nurse dressed him in little shirted suits that went unharmoniously with his pinched and precocious features; he looked like a waxen elf or a changeling. Yet, from a parental standpoint he was a model child; mischief seemed absent from his make-up. He was strangely content to be alone, and happily played meaningless games with himself. John still talked to him at evening. He listened owlishly solemn, and seldom questioned, and seasons came and vanished.

Nothing ever disturbed his poise. John’s equally grim and never friendly brother Edward (also named for that old father of both) came once or twice to call in the early years.

“The brat’s lonesome,” he stated baldly. “You’ll bring him up queer unless you get him some friends.”

The four-year-old Edmond answered for himself in a piping voice: “I’m not lonesome.”

“Eh? Who do you play with?”

“I play with myself. I talk with myself. I don’t need any friend.”

His uncle laughed. “Queer, John, like I told you.”

Queer or not, the imp developed. At six he was a silent slender child with curious amber eyes and nondescript brown hair, and a habit of spending many hours alone at the window. He betrayed none of the father-worship common to sons, but he liked the slowly aging John, and they got along well together in a distant way. His curious hands had long ago ceased to bother his father; they were at least as useful as normal members, and at times unusually apt and delicate. The child built things—tall houses of cards that John’s steadiness could not duplicate, intricate bits of machinery from a mechanical building toy, and sometimes neat little sailing planes of paper, matches, and glue.

At this age Edmond’s quiet way of living was rather ruthlessly upset. John chose to enter him in school.

Excerpt From: Stanley G. Weinbaum. “The New Adam.”