The artificial man by Clare Winger Harris
The artificial man by Clare Winger Harris is a science fiction short story written in the early 20th century. It examines the boundary between mind and body through radical prosthetics, asking whether identity survives when the flesh is replaced and warning how obsession can corrupt character. Promising student-athlete George Gregory loses a leg in a game and, shaken in spirit, begins to equate physical loss with a loss of soul. After a
later car crash takes an arm and damages his organs, he adopts artificial limbs and an artificial kidney, grows embittered, and turns against his fiancée Rosalind and his former friend, surgeon David Bell, whom she eventually marries. Determined to prove identity can persist on a “minimum” of flesh, George submits to multiple operations until he becomes a mechanized being with detachable limbs and a chest control board powering his movements. He returns to murder David, but the young interne Lucius Stevens and police break in; realizing the machine-man’s weakness lies in the control panel and his right hand, they disable him. Dying, George repents, admitting it was his mind—not his injuries—that doomed him, and the tale closes as a caution against letting despair and pride overpower the will to heal. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Harris, Clare Winger, 1891-1968 |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Paul, Frank R. (Frank Rudolph), 1884-1963 |
| Title | The artificial man |
| Original Publication | Mt. Morris, IL: Stellar Publishing Company, 1929. |
| Series Title | Produced from the Fall, 1929 issue of Science Wonder Quarterly magazine. |
| Credits | Roger Frank and Sue Clark |
| Reading Level | Reading ease score: 70.9 (7th grade). Fairly easy to read. |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature |
| Subject | Science fiction |
| Subject | Short stories |
| Subject | Cyborgs -- Fiction |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 76114 |
| Release Date | May 19, 2025 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 181 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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