The golden man

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The Golden Man (English original title The Golden Man ) is a short story by the US science fiction writer Philip K. Dick from 1954. The story is one of the classics among Dick's short stories and is the template for the movie Next with Nicolas Cage in the lead role.

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The story takes place on the territory of the United States around 60 years after a war that resulted in mutants. Worldwide, an intelligence agency called the DCA is hunting the mutants to ensure the leading role of humans as a species on Earth. The organization maintains an internment camp in which mutated people are first examined and then "euthanized," that is, killed.

George Baines searches for mutants under the guise of a traveling salesman and listens to the population on his travels. After suspecting himself in a pub in Walnut Creek , he uses a pretext to gain access to the Johnson family home. When the suspicion is confirmed, plainclothes policemen are immediately on the spot, who encircle the farm area and begin to comb it in search of the mutant, but the 18-year-old farmer's son Cris voluntarily surrenders himself into the hands of his captors. Cris has golden hair, golden skin and looks like you would imagine a god to be. Another noticeable thing is that at the age of 18 he has not yet spoken a single word.

Cris is examined in the headquarters laboratory. The secret service people quickly find out that Cris' specialty is to foresee the future. He only surrendered to the secret police because he foresaw no escape. Actually, he can avoid fatal shots because he foresees where the bullet will hit.

Cris sits peacefully in his observation cell, but is repeatedly shot at for testing. When he breaks out, the secret police cordon off the whole building. A game of cat and mouse begins as Cris knows where to look in advance and can avoid the captors. But he does not come out of the building at first. In a short section, Dick describes the inner workings of Cris, how he sees the branching possibilities of the future in a fan-like manner, the near future more clearly, the distant future weaker. Conversely, however, he has no memory.

Meanwhile, laboratory tests have shown that Cris has an animal brain and no language skills or human intelligence. With his splendid mane, Cris now appears more like a golden lion to Baines and his colleagues. Horrified, they ask themselves whether the human being with his intelligence is an obsolete model, while on the next higher evolutionary level, foresight dominates. You want to kill Cris.

Cris first fled to the quarters of Anita Ferris, Baines' fiancé. He approaches her in an intimate way. Since Anita has a high administrative rank, she can distract the guards so that Cris manages to escape. Baines and his colleagues understand that besides predicting, Cris has another selection advantage: he can seduce any woman with his divine appearance. You now want to search for Cris all over the world. If Cris and a woman were to father an offspring who can foresee and at the same time possess human intelligence, the last hour of Homo sapiens would come.

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The short story served as a template for the movie Next from 2007, in which the protagonist can look into the future for about two minutes; in the short story it is ten minutes and more. Otherwise the plot of the film has almost no relation to the original.

The story probably takes place around the turn of the 21st century, as George Baines drives a "battered old" 1978 Buick .

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