| “ | Race preservation is a myth. A myth that you all have lived by. A sordid thing that has arisen out of your social structure. The race ends every day. When a man dies the race ends for him. So far as he's concerned there is no longer any race. |
” |
— Joe, explaining why he doesn't care about the future of humanity.
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| Joe | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| |||
| Naming | |||
| Others | N/A | ||
| Personal information | |||
| Species | Human (mutant) | ||
| Gender | Male | ||
| Place of origin | Earth | ||
| Age | 163 at the time of the events of "Census" | ||
| Current status | Unknown | ||
| Biology | |||
| Body type | Human | ||
| Abilities | Telepathy Longevity | ||
| Sentience | Sentient | ||
| Sapience | Sapient | ||
| Behind the scenes | |||
| Universe | City | ||
| Created by | Clifford D. Simak | ||
Joe is a mutant who was born on Earth, in a future in which humanity has colonized other star systems and the few remaining Earth people have given up living in cities in favor of a pastoral, agrarian existence, assisted by sapient robots. As a mutant, Joe operates under a different mentality and ethics, has natural telepathic abilities, and ages much more slowly than normal.
Personality[]
An isolationist by nature, Joe's mind is structured in a way that he's literally unconcerned about what people think of him. Although not quite a misanthrope, as he holds no real grudge, merely indifference; Joe cannot grasp the motivations that would lead a man to care about anything that happens beyond his own lifespan, or to sacrifice himself to do something for the benefit of others.
History[]
Nothing is known about Joe's origins. At 163 years old, he still looked like a teenager and calculated that he could live up to a thousand years if he took good care of himself. He prefers to live by himself in the woods and rarely has any contact with other people.
Besides being a telepath, he is extremely skilled at fixing things, and his favorite past-time is finding something that's broken, fixing it before the owner's eyes and leaving in silence, without waiting for thanks or acknowledgements. Local people tell stories about him, finding it incredible that he never ages and almost never speaks a single word when he appears. Apparently, he does what he does for simple personal amusement.
Additionally, Joe has been instrumental in triggering the emergence of the sapient ant civilization. He was the first to notice the elevated intelligence of some ant colonies, and the fact that the necessity to gather food and hibernate during the winter was the only thing halting their progress. Just to amuse himself, Joe started to feed these ants, and built a glass dome over the anthill that would keep it warm, so they wouldn't need to hibernate. He also built miniature carts, of a size suitable for the ants, and left them around until the ants themselves finally figured out that they could be used to carry food more efficiently. After more than ten years observing their progress, Joe got tired of the ants and left them on their on, as they continued to evolve by themselves.
In the following centuries, other mutants like Joe were discovered and they were regarded as a social threat. The intelligent dogs, descended from Bruce Webster's experiments, were employed to keep track of them, as they could tell the difference between mutants and regular Humans by scent.
At some point in the distant future, the mutants left Earth and migrated to parallel worlds.
Appearances[]
- "Census", by Clifford D. Simak (1944)
- "Paradise", by Clifford D. Simak (1946)
- City, by Clifford D. Simak (1952)