EIDOLON

An attenuated speculation which borrows a gimmick or two from the science fiction medium, uses a newspaper room background, and goes off on a long toot when it comes to science, religion- and housing. Sam Raleigh, a newspaperman, tells the story of Newton Muir, his charge, when Muir's unbelievable record as a chess player and a track champion brings him to Sam's attention. His interest in Muir's fabulous brain and body takes him in turn to Muir's father, a psychiatrist, and through his father he learns of the birth of this biological sport of parthenogenesis. This, in case you've forgotten your biology, is fertilization by an unnatural means, and Martha, the boy's mother- and a most unusual girl -- had willed the son she wanted to bear without contact with the man she loved. But for all his brilliance, Newt proves a somewhat naive and susceptible protage for Raleigh who tries to protect him from an older woman -- Maritza, from the alums of Harlem, fails -- and Newt is killed.....Imponderables and improbables, handled you might say with invention rather than distinction.