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Sometimes supermen just pop up out of nowhere.
In his 1940 novel Slan, A. E. Van Vogt
posited a recently evolved race of new men who lived hidden within
society, and the most isolated and lonely of this persecuted and
underappreciated lot was a boy who was in reality a latent superman of
physique, science, and intellect who was destined for glory. It was a
neat, if poorly written power fantasy, but it's particularly
interesting from the point of view of Future Past in that Slan
became the Catcher in the Rye of the nerd set of the 1940s with
sci-fi aficionados, who already saw themselves as the disregarded
vanguard of the future, adopting the slogan "Fans are Slans."
For most, this was simply a bit of adolescent
bravado covering up a sense of inadequacy, but a few fans started
taking the idea way too seriously. In fact, one lot called the
Cosmic Circle run by a bloke named Charles Degler tried to
start a commune in the Ozarks where the nascent supermen could gather
and breed to begin the reign of Homo Superior, which just goes
to show that if you let day dreaming run too far you end up getting
fitted for a tinfoil cap. |
