Odd John, by Olaf Stapledon

Frequently, tragic novels feature a main character who makes selfish or impractical decisions, leading to a personal disaster of some sort. Along the way, readers are often challenged to decide between their feelings of compassion or contempt toward that character – Flaubert’s Madame Bovary is a classic example of this sort of thing.

Even though Olaf Stapledon’s 1935 novel Odd John is also a tale of hubris, the conflict between compassion and contempt takes place within the main character, in how he feels toward us, as contemporary homo sapiens. It is the story of a genetic mutant who becomes aware of his natural superiority, contacts other mutants like him, and attempts to prepare his emerging race of homo superior for the coming end of mankind.

Published the year before the Spanish Civil War and four years before the beginning of World War II, OJ references the inevitable build-up toward a global conflict that will threaten civilization itself. Stapledon (1886-1950), a philosopher who served as a conscientious objector during World War I, was evidently inspired by world events to reject mankind’s assumed place of permanence as the planet’s dominant species. He considered us to have too many natural limitations to grasp the truth about our place within the universe, and invented “odd” John Wainright to tell us so.

Lewis R. Wolhberg cover for Dover. isfdb.org

When I told John that I intended to write his biography, he laughed. “My dear man!” he said, “But of course it was inevitable.” The word “man” on John’s lips was often equivalent to “fool.”

Through the perspective of a family friend (OJ is a fictional biography, written in the post-Victorian style of dithering and euphemisms), we witness much of the entire life of John, from his earliest days to second-hand reports of his death. First taking on mathematics, he quickly develops the ability to comprehend abstract principles far beyond professionals. Throughout his childhood, he takes on different interests – medicine, engineering, finance and fistfighting – mastering them all and proving too “odd” to be integrated into society, much less grammar school. He obtains some satisfaction in mastering the hearts and minds of the neighborhood kids, impressing them with acts of mischief.

Many passages of OJ are told as transcriptions of John describing his past actions to the biographer. This technique of storytelling is especially useful for many of the more disturbing aspects of John’s story, which are (meekly) challenged by the morals of Stapledon’s time.

The first of these episodes involves theft and murder. Having become interested in burglary, John goes on many nighttime adventures breaking into wealthy households. One of these trips finally results in an encounter with a local policeman, who catches him dangling from the roof:

“I must have hung motionless for three seconds at most, but in that time I saw myself and my world as never before. An idea toward which I had long but doubtfully groping suddenly displayed itself to me with complete clarity and certainty. I had already, some time before, come to think of myself as definitely of a different biological species for Homo sapiens, the species of that amiable bloodhound behind the torch. …”

How convenient for John, to arrive at this train of thought when faced with prospect of suffering the consequences of his actions. He decides that his independence, needed to “advance the spirit on the planet,” is too important to be subject to the rules of the humans around him, and disposes of the policeman (Smithson) with swift but brutal action.

John’s account of this strange incident sowed me how little I had known of his real character at that time.

“You must have felt pretty bad on the way home,” I said.

“As a matter of fact,” he answered, “I didn’t. The bad feeling ended when I made my decision. And I didn’t go straight home. I went to Smithson’s house, intending to kill his wife. I knew she was down with cancer and in for a lot of pain, and would be broken-hearted over her husband’s death …”

It’s clear that by this time, John has – by recognition of his intellectual superiority – found his own justification for imposing his will on the lives of others. He does this more and more often, albeit in ways other than killing, as he matures into adulthood. He has various sexual relationships with young people of both genders, although the narrator frets more about the sex itself than the emotional manipulation. He poses as a lost youth and gets taken into the houses of various unwitting families. The narrator himself is an important tool for John – he earns the nickname Fido and becomes the public face of John’s many business ventures. Fido plays the part of the eccentric millionaire, filing patents for John’s many inventions and covering for his frequent disappearances.

After spending time among the “intellectuals” of English society, John appears to give up on living among normal humans, and retreats into the mountains of Scotland. There he lives alone for an extended time, surviving the brutal weather with hardly any equipment. Stapledon spends quite a bit of time detailing these adventures, first from the recollections of two Scottish climbers that spotted John, and through the words of John himself, after he finally returns to Fido. Somewhere along the way, John developed psychic abilities:

John paused, and I interjected, “What sort of quality?”

He looked at me for some seconds in silence. Believe it or not, but that prolonged gaze had a really terrifying effect on me. I am not suggesting that there was something magical about it. The effect was of the same kind as any normal facial expression may have. But knowing John as I did, and remembering the strange events of his summer in Scotland, I was not doubt peculiarly susceptible. I can only describe what I felt by means of an image…

Eventually, John discloses to Fido that he can telepathically connect with other “supernormal” minds across great distances. He decides to seek them out and build a utopian colony of super-humans to live separately from the rest of the world. His first quests lead him to individuals who are telepathic but critically undeveloped as physical or psychological beings. One plays a bizarre panflute while institutionalized, and another is a permanent infant with a monstrously evil mind. However, he does find capable supernormal companions from across Europe, some who grow to share in John’s affectionate derision of Fido. Many of them are recruited into founding a utopian society on a distant Pacific island.

A perusal of OJ reviews have yielded some discussion of Nietzsche’s superman ideas. This gathering of super-normals bears some resemblance to the concept of the Übermensch of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but I see a critical difference (in my admittedly novice-level understanding of such things): Nietzsche’s super-humans are people who have willed themselves to their new status, while John and friends are all differentiated as genetic mutations.  Also, the Übermensch does not wish to escape his world, whereas John clearly does, by creating an island utopia. Stapledon may have been influenced by Nietzsche but OJ does not make him a philosophical descendant.

Richard Powers cover for Berkeley Medallion. isfdb.org

Stapledon’s philosophy is focused* on the limitations of “normal” humans who make up the contemporary world, and the super-normals in OJ are fictional creations for illustrating these limitations. One of these limits is the impossibility of a planned society. Late in OJ, one Chinese super-normal suffers a nervous breakdown after “reverting” to a normal status, i.e., losing her telepathic connection. She attacks her romantic partner with a knife before being sedated, and then killed. It’s a curious incident that occurs for one of two reasons: 1.) it’s impossible for “normals” to live within a society of super-normals (but Fido himself spends a long time on the island to document the society), or 2.) it’s not quite possible, even for a group of telepathically connected super-normals, to create a utopia that allows all of its members to thrive as individuals.

OJ ends after a series of confrontations between the super-normals and “normals” who arrive by ship. The details of these encounters do not seem important, and Stapledon describes them with a kind of half-interested repetition. The greater point was that the super-normals realize that they cannot hope to sustainably exist on their own. It is debatable that OJ fully explains Fido’s involvement, and ends in a plausible fashion.

Despite my misgivings about the ending chapters, Stapledon’s novel is a pillar of SF in its early decades. It is a dense, philosophical novel that deepens the speculations of Wells, and has a style and presence of its own. 8/10.

* Maybe. This is only my first Stapledon novel.