Skip to main content

Short story same as the "Lucy" movie


I am trying to remember the name and the author of a short story that seems to have a similar plot to the Besson's movie "Lucy".


I read that stories more than 30 years ago: A scientist made an evolution experiment on a man and a woman. The man de-evolves to a beast and the woman evolves to have God-like power, having to fight against people trying to control her.


I remember having read classic "pulps" authors at that time.




Edit
I have browsed lot of novella descriptions. There is one that seems to match, "Research Alpha" - Van Vogt (1965). It features an "evolution serum" and "big IQ levels". Unfortunately, I don't have the book at hand. If someone would check it that would be great.



Edit This list has been submitted by Deepak



  • Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

  • The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn

  • Understand by Ted Chiang.




Answer



You've pinpointed the correct story in the comments, so if you want to add your own answer I'll delete this. For now I'll answer in case anyone wants more information.


The story is called Research Alpha and appeared in the anthology More than Superhuman. It also appeared as a subplot in the novel Supermind. Van Vogt had a tendancy to bolt together his short stories to make novels - not always with happy results.


Spoilers follow:


The underlying idea is that the Great Galactics have injected some of their own genes into the races they encounter, but during human evolution these genes have become unevenly distributed. The scientist Dr Gloge is working on a project called Point Omega Stimulation which aims to enhance human evolution. Gloge secretly injects two people, Barbara Ellington and Vincent Strather with the Omega serum. Barbara possesses an unusually favourable package of Great Galactic genes and the serum enhances these so she basically turns into a Great Galactic. In Vincent the serum enhances other genes and he becomes a goblin like figure - it's implied but not stated explicitly that he's become mentally subnormal.


In Supermind it's made clear that this is a deliberate manipulation by the Great Galactic William Leigh. He had detected the favourable genes in Barbara and wanted her to attain her full potential so he can have her as a companion. Vincent was included in the experiment to demonstrate to mankind that the process would mostly fail so it shouldn't be used routinely. As far as I recall this aspect of the plot is absent from the original short story.


Vincent recovers, so it's a happy ending :-)


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.
Post a Comment
Read more

aliens - Interstellar Zoo story

I vaguely remember this story from my childhood: it was about an interstellar zoo that came to Earth with lots of bizarre and unusual species, and humans would file through and gape at all the crazy looking creatures from other planets. The twist came at the end when the perspective shifted to the other side of the bars and we discovered that the "creatures" were traveling through space on a kind of safari. They thought they were the visitors and we were the animals. Neither side knew that the other side thought they were the zoo creatures. Answer Got it. Zoo, by Edward D. Hoch. Published in 1958. Link to Publication History Link to PDF
Post a Comment
Read more

harry potter - Did Dolores Umbridge Have Any Association with Voldemort (or Death Eaters) before His Return?

I noticed that Dolores Umbridge was born during the first Wizarding War, so it's very likely she wasn't a Death Eater then (but she is pretty evil -- who knows?). After that Voldemort was not around in a way that could affect many people, and most wouldn't know he was planning to rise again. During that time, and up through Voldemort's return (in Goblet of Fire ), did Umbridge have any connection with the Death Eaters or with Voldemort? Was she doing what she did on her own, or was it because of an association with Voldemort or his allies? Answer Dolores Umbridge was definitely not a good person. However, as Sirius points out, "the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters". Remember that he also says that he doesn't believe Umbridge to be a Death Eater, but that she's evil enough (or something like that). I think there are two strong reasons to believe that: Umbridge was proud to do everything according to the law, except when she trie...
Post a Comment
Read more

harry potter - What is the difference between Diffindo and Sectumsempra?

In the Harry Potter books, Diffindo is called the 'Severing Charm' and it’s most commonly used to cut ropes and the like. However, in the last book Hermione uses it on Ron but misses, creating a 'slash in his jeans' and his knee gets cut, causing him to 'roar in pain'. We've only seen Sectumsempra used once on screen when Harry directly uses it on Malfoy in the sixth book, but there it's mentioned that he is 'waving his wand wildly'. Wouldn't Diffindo, if used in such a fashion also cause a similar effect? Similarly, if it was able to cut Ron, it would also be able to, say, chop off an ear (George's)? In that case, how are these two spells different, except for Sectumsempra seemingly used exclusively to hurt humans? Answer While Diffindo and Sectumsempra both can be countered by other spells, Diffindo is far more easily countered. Reparo, a relatively common spell, can completely reverse its effect when used once. “He pulled the old cop...
Post a Comment
Read more