Alaric Wayne

Poul Anderson's Alaric Wayne partly reminds me of Stieg Larrson's Lisbeth Salander. Both are regarded as retarded. Lisbeth is raped and does not tell the police but exacts justice herself. Alaric learns that a gang is about to attack the town and does not tell anyone else but instead instantly designs and constructs a new kind of weapon to kill the attackers. However, Lisbeth avoids the police because she has learned that the authorities never listen to her whereas Alaric tells no one else because he did not think of it.

Human beings think consecutively whereas the mutant Alaric thinks holistically. The Presidential agent suggests that mutual understanding between humanity and Alaric might lead to a biological and sociological mathematics and thus to "'...the first sane civilization in history.'" (5, p. 67) (For full reference, see here.) Here again is the notion that an exact social science would solve social problems.