Fourth "R", The

Armchair fiction presents extra large paperback editions of the best in classic science fiction novels. “The Fourth ‘R’” is a great tale by science fiction specialist, George O. Smith. Jimmy Holden was an experiment. He was bright, normal-sized, and enormously curious—just like most small boys. The only thing different in Jimmy’s life was a machine—a machine that could teach him better, faster, more completely and more thoroughly than any human method ever devised. It was really nothing more than a glorified memorizing contraption, but it filled his mind permanently with whole books of facts and figures—plus all the diverse information that an insatiably curious young mind could seek, including how to build the machine that taught him. So Jimmy quickly became a very valuable experiment indeed. Certain people figured that, if properly handled, young James could be a goldmine, and they weren’t above murder in order to get control of him. But even a five-year-old mind will defend itself when attacked.

George Oliver Smith (1911 - 1981) (also known by the pseudonym Wesley Long) was an American science fiction author. Smith was an active contributor to Astounding Science Fiction during the Golden Age of Science Fiction in the 1940s. His collaboration with the magazine's editor, John W. Campbell, Jr. was interrupted when Campbell's first wife, Doña, left him in 1949 and married Smith.