Mutant (short story collection)


Mutant is a 1953 collection of science fiction short stories by Lewis Padgett. It was first published by Gnome Press in 1953 in an edition of 4,000 copies. The stories all originally appeared in the magazine Astounding.

Contents

  • "The Piper’s Son"
  • "Three Blind Mice"
  • "The Lion and the Unicorn"
  • "Beggars in Velvet"
  • "Humpty Dumpty"
  • Epilogue

Reception

P. Schuyler Miller found the story compilation nearly as effective as Simak's City. Groff Conklin, reviewing the 1953 edition for Galaxy, characterized it as "among the most mature, imaginative and moving pictures of a post-atomic-war world." While Boucher and McComas praised the stories as "splendid statements of the difficulties of adjustment between man and esper-man," they found that taken together they became "repetitive in plot and situation." Writing for the New York Times, McComas declared that Kuttner's treatment of the theme was "so perfect, so complete" that all subsequent writers "have been confined within his all-embracing framework" and praised the volume as "a beguiling story rich in reading entertainment."