Children of the Atom by Wilmar H. Shiras
"Children of the Atom" explores the journey of exceptionally intelligent children who emerge after a disaster at an atomic power plant. When school psychologist Dr. Peter Welles encounters Timothy Paul, a withdrawn thirteen-year-old boy hiding his intelligence, he learns that Tim's abilities stem from a mutation linked to the disaster in "Helium City." Together, they connect with other superintelligent children across the country, leading to the establishment of a special school funded by Tim's wealthy grandparents. The school aims to support the children's intellectual growth while addressing their emotional and social development.
As the children create remarkable works under various aliases, they face challenges, including one child's lack of empathy. The narrative highlights their resilience and ability to solve problems collaboratively. However, their existence is threatened when a televangelist labels them as sinister beings, prompting a public outcry. In response, Tim and the other children choose to integrate into public schools, striving to demonstrate their humanity and foster connections with the broader community. The story ultimately emphasizes themes of acceptance, the value of diversity in intelligence, and the importance of emotional growth alongside intellectual achievement.
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Subject Terms
Children of the Atom
First published: 1953 (first three chapters published individually as novelettes: “In Hiding,” Astounding Science-Fiction, November, 1948; “Opening Doors,” Astounding Science-Fiction, March, 1949; and “New Foundations,” Astounding Science-Fiction, March, 1950)
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Science fiction—superbeing
Time of work: 1973
Locale: Primarily the San Francisco Bay area
The Plot
After being called in to help a withdrawn thirteen-year-old boy, school psychologist Dr. Peter Welles realizes that the boy, Timothy Paul, is immeasurably intelligent. Taught by his guardians that precocity is often punished as boastful exhibitionism, Tim has lived “in hiding,” masking his abilities while carrying out a secret life as an author under a variety of pseudonyms. Welles soon deduces that Tim’s intelligence is the result of a mutation caused by a disaster at an atomic power plant in “Helium City,” where his parents worked thirteen years earlier.
Realizing that other such children must exist all across the country, Welles and Tim begin to get in touch with them. Tim is able to persuade his rich grandparents to fund a special school for the superintelligent, to be run by Welles and other adults who are let in on the secret. A sizable number of the thirty surviving children are gathered at this school. Many are rescued from oppressive domestic situations, and one from an asylum. Most of them have replicated Tim’s strategy of performing remarkable work under adult aliases: They produce novels, biographies, a popular comic strip, and a successful board game. At Welles’s school they are rescued from their loneliness and allowed a chance to grow and develop.
Welles’s greatest challenge is to ensure that all the children mature in each aspect of their lives. A problem soon arises when one of the children is discovered to have little or no emotional capacity for empathy. The children themselves, not Welles, are able to devise a solution to the problem. They also conceive the project that will occupy them in their maturity, a kind of summa scientia, or what would be called today a grand unified theory, linking all branches of knowledge and the arts in one comprehensible construct.
Before they are able to begin that project, their exis-tence is shouted to the world by a televangelist, Tommy Mundy, who claims that these “children of the atom” are the spawn of the devil, plotting a world takeover. Again the children themselves form a solution, initially convincing the angry mob that gathers outside the school that they are not monsters but familiar people the crowd has known all their lives. Tim Paul urges the ultimate solution: The children will attend public schools in the area, both to show others that they are not fundamentally different and to develop and demonstrate the “right feeling” toward humanity. The children of the atom, in Tim’s words, “join the human race.”