The artificial man

About The artificial man

The artificial man by Clare Winger Harris is a science fiction short story written in the early 20th century. It examines the boundary between mind and body through radical prosthetics, asking whether identity survives when the flesh is replaced and warning how obsession can corrupt character. Promising student-athlete George Gregory loses a leg in a game and, shaken in spirit, begins to equate physical loss with a loss of soul. After a later car crash takes an arm and damages his organs, he adopts artificial limbs and an artificial kidney, grows embittered, and turns against his fiancée Rosalind and his former friend, surgeon David Bell, whom she eventually marries. Determined to prove identity can persist on a “minimum” of flesh, George submits to multiple operations until he becomes a mechanized being with detachable limbs and a chest control board powering his movements. He returns to murder David, but the young interne Lucius Stevens and police break in; realizing the machine-man’s weakness lies in the control panel and his right hand, they disable him. Dying, George repents, admitting it was his mind—not his injuries—that doomed him, and the tale closes as a caution against letting despair and pride overpower the will to heal.

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