Sökande efter historia före 1980 om en unevolved man

"Vänlighet" av Lester del Rey , först publicerad i Häpnadsväckande Science fiction , oktober 1944 , tillgänglig på Internetarkiv . Betraktar någon av dessa omslag bekanta?

I del Reys berättelse är Danny Black den sista överlevande Homo sapiens i en värld av supermän:

Homo sapiens! The type of man who had come out of the caves and built a world of atomic power, electronics and other old-time wonders—thinking man, as it translated from the Latin. In the dim past, when his ancestors had owned the world, they had made a joke of it, shortening it to homo sap, and laughing, because there had been no other species to rival them. Now it was no longer a joke.

Normal man had been only a "sap" to homo intelligens—intelligent man—who was now the master of the world. Danny was only a left-over, the last normal man in a world of supermen, hating the fact that he had been born, and that his mother had died at his birth to leave him only loneliness as his heritage.

Danny tror inte att han är ett geni; han är smärtsamt medveten om sin underlägsenhet, även om supermännen går i stor utsträckning för att behandla honom vänligt och ge honom ett jobbet. Till sist tror han att han har övertygat dem genom att stjäla ett gammalt raketskepp och fly i rymden:

The note might be ten years or half a dozen centuries old—but his people had been here, fighting on and managing to live, after Earth had been lost to them. If they could, so could he!

And unlikely though it seemed, there might possibly be more of them out there somewhere. Perhaps the race was still surviving in spite of time and trouble and even homo intelligens.

Danny's eyes were moist as he stepped back from the door and the darkness outside to begin cleaning his new home. If any were there, he'd find them. And if not—

Well, he was still a member of a great and daring race that could never know defeat so long as a single man might live. He would never forget that.

Samtidigt, tillbaka på jorden:

"Well, he swallowed our lies and ran off with the ship we built him. I hope he's happy, for a while at least."

Kanske letar du efter Caliban av Robert Silverberg, första publicerad 1972. Här är en kort sammanfattning:

It's 2103 and people can change their bodily appearance practically at will. Everyone has chosen (this month) to be sleek-skinned, athletic, blue-eyed blondes. Into this world comes a man born in 1967, with all his bodily flaws, lumpy nose, dark hair, and quaint attitudes. He's a renowned curiosity, the world's greatest novelty, and gets to have sex with many women. But popularity in this world has a price ...
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