Short Story PDF EPUB

The Ideal

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Pages: 19

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About this book

Dixon Wells has trouble arriving on time, holding his father's confidence and keeping his thoughts away from television performers. His former physics professor, Haskel van Manderpootz, has a more ambitious concern: proving what reason and machinery can accomplish. In the professor's New York laboratory, a metal robot supplies the occasion for extravagant arguments about individuality, perfect societies and the disadvantages of perfection.

Stanley G. Weinbaum's comic science fiction story turns those arguments into a personal problem when Dixon tries the professor's idealizator. He thinks of a girl and sees an image that leaves everyday life painfully disappointing. The professor's own trial exposes a very different idea of human excellence. Told through Dixon's amused and increasingly troubled account, the story connects speculative invention with romantic longing and an inventor's enormous self-regard.

About the author

Stanley G. Weinbaum

Stanley G. Weinbaum (1902-1935) was an American writer whose eighteen-month science fiction career proved wildly influential. His 1934 debut, 'A Martian Odyssey,' redefined how the genre imagined alien life. He died of cancer at thirty-three, leaving stories that shaped the writers who came after him.

More by Stanley G. Weinbaum

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Book facts

Author: Stanley G. Weinbaum
Reading time: About 35 minutes
Pages: 19
Language: English
Genre: Short Story
Formats: PDF, EPUB, Read online