From: potter@csusac.ecs.csus.edu (Carl Kolchak)
Subject: "CHILDREN OF THE ATOM" - Wilmar Shiras
Followup-To: /dev/null
Summary:  partly good.   ("mostly harmless.)
Keywords: smart kids
Organization: INS, Inc.
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 92 06:39:06 GMT

Jonathan Lennox asked:

> Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
> Subject: CHILDREN OF THE ATOM--50's SF Juvenile--author wanted
> Message-ID: <1992Apr7.031105.17774@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>
> From: jml12@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Jonathan M Lennox)
> Date: 7 Apr 92 03:11:05 GMT
> Reply-To: jml12@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Jonathan M Lennox)
> Sender: usenet@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (The Network News)
> Organization: Columbia University
> 
> My mother tells me that when she was a kid, in the 50's, one of her
> favorite books was a juvenile called CHILDREN OF THE ATOM, which she
> got out of her local library.  She would like to try to find it again,
> but she can't remember the author, and I believe it is out of print.
> Does anyone know any info about this book?
> 
> Please e-mail, I will post a summary to the net.
> 
> Jonathan Lennox / jml12@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu

I tried E-mail, and it bounced.
 
"CHILDREN OF THE ATOM" is a composite of several stories written by 
Wilmar H. Shiras.   The first piece of the book, "IN HIDING," was an
award-caliber story, and interesting points were made in the subsequent
parts. 
It's not a "juvenile," per se; most of it was originally published in 
ASTOUNDING, a pulp SF magazine aimed at putative adults.
 
The book publication dates from the fifties, and was repeated in paperback
in the sixties.   In the late seventies, it was reprinted in one of those
excellent hardbound printings from a small press in the Berkeley area; 
I can't remember the publisher, but it's still available from specialty
dealers.
 
I've always felt that the later stories went steadily downhill, in a 
sense selling their birthright for a mess of "peer adjustment."
At the time those stories were written, democratization of the American
educational process was in full swing, and accelerated students were 
not welcomed in our school system.  The attitude the book preaches 
says that different, more evolved people can't live and work together,
but have to turn back to "humanity," and go out in the world and live
with the animals, without reference to what they might accomplish if 
they didn't have to waste time on human social graces and self-protection.
 
The first story, "IN HIDING," ends with a line something like, "And when
he was grown, where among the puppies would he find a mate?"  Now *that* 
kind of thing could have made a topnotch novel; but instead, Shiras 
espoused the common attitude of the time, saying that Homo Novus would 
have to subsume itself in Homo "Sapiens" rather than surviving with 
style. 
Shiras' evocation of the two major characters in the first story was 
superbly done.  The rest of the stories are undistinguished, but worth
reading. 
 
The book was derived from John W. Campbell's First Lesson; the idea
that, if you want to write about supermen, you have to deal with the 
Superman-as-child, or via HUMAN viewpoints, of the understandable 
human charcters around him.   
 
Another novel in this genre would be Phyllis Gottlieb (sp?)'s "SUNBURST."
(late-sixties paperback, not too hard to find in used book stores.)
 
However, the guy who did it RIGHT was Theodore Sturgeon.  His novel 
"MORE THAN HUMAN," an expansion of his award-winning "BABY IS THREE"
which won an award of its own (the first International Fantasy Award
given to an American writer for Best Novel) is VERY VERY VERY highly 
recommended.   If you read it, you'll see masterful storytelling, 
sensitivity, and craftsmanship.  And an ORIGINAL treatment of the 
*proper* kind of peer-group adjustment of Homo Novo interacting with
humanity; by symbiosis, not defeatist subsumation.
Not hard to find; there have been *lots* of printings.
 
Good luck.  If you haven't read "MORE THAN HUMAN," you're in for a treat.
And the Shiras and Gottlieb books are both worth finding as well.


Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written