Calumet “K” by Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster, from 1904. A very Analog/Astounding piece of engineer-fiction about an unstoppable can-do kind of fellow. Despite being completely contemporary, if you’d read this in Analog or Astounding in the ’50s-’80s you wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. I’m quite surprised it hasn’t been taken up by the business literature field.
It’s unfortunately most famous as a major influence on -yn R-nd, who appears only to have obtained from it the idea of the hero-engineer, which she then added as flavour to her own weirdness. (Compare the actual influence of You Can’t Win by Jack Black on William S. Burroughs—the Black book is very readable and was a best-seller at the time.) Don’t let that taint it for you, it’s a cracking good read.
Calumet “K” by Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster, from 1904. A very Analog/Astounding piece of engineer-fiction about an unstoppable can-do kind of fellow. Despite being completely contemporary, if you’d read this in Analog or Astounding in the ’50s-’80s you wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. I’m quite surprised it hasn’t been taken up by the business literature field.
It’s unfortunately most famous as a major influence on -yn R-nd, who appears only to have obtained from it the idea of the hero-engineer, which she then added as flavour to her own weirdness. (Compare the actual influence of You Can’t Win by Jack Black on William S. Burroughs—the Black book is very readable and was a best-seller at the time.) Don’t let that taint it for you, it’s a cracking good read.