Writing both philosophical treatises and science fiction through the 1930s and 40s, Olaf Stapledon was enormously influential in both fields, and esteemed by figures from Arthur C. Clarke and Jorge Luis Borges to Bertrand Russell and Virginia Woolf.

John Wainwright is a freak, a human mutation with an extraordinary intelligence which is both awesome and frightening, in this groundbreaking 1935 novel. Ordinary people are playthings to him, and Odd John has a plan to create a new order, a new supernormal species on Earth. But the world is not ready for such a change.

"The first superman story and still by all odds the best."—Damon Knight