One reviewer wrote, "What we find here is an inventive updating of Stapledon's famous Odd John (1935) in very sensitive, unsentimental terms, with the addition of a sense of community, a benefit that Stapledon's protagonist never got to fully experience. Shiras tells her story in simple yet affecting prose, a kind of blend of Sturgeon and Simak. "
Probably written around 1932-33 (when Stapledon was working on Odd John, his tale of a superhuman youth), the book is essentially a first draft of the author's 1937 opus Star Maker, though there are many marked differences to the later, more polished work.
Later explorations of the theme of the superhuman and of the incompatibility of the normal with the supernormal occurs in the works of Stanisław Lem, Frank Herbert, Wilmar Shiras, Robert Heinlein and Vernor Vinge, among others.
John F. Kennedy | Pope John Paul II | Elton John | John | John Lennon | John Wayne | John McCain | John Kerry | John Cage | Olivia Newton-John | John Williams | John Peel | John Adams | John Steinbeck | John Travolta | John Milton | John Zorn | John Marshall | John Howard | John Singer Sargent | John Ruskin | John Updike | John Maynard Keynes | John Coltrane | John Cleese | St. John's | John Waters | John Lee Hooker | John Huston | John Ford |
The story draws particularly from Stapledon's novels Last and First Men (1930), Last Men in London (1932), Odd John (1935) and Sirius (1944).
Stapledon first announced his intention to write a history of the universe in his 1935 work Odd John, in which the main character, John Wainwright, has already produced such a thing (Stapledon would often mention his next literary project in the book he was currently working on - the story of "Odd John" is itself mentioned in passing in 1932's Last Men in London).