Other editions of book Gladiator

Originally Published: 1930"The lusty life of an uninhibited superman!"A scientist invents a serum to improve humankind by granting the proportionate strength of an ant and the leaping ability of the grasshopper. He injects his pregnant wife with the serum, and his son Hugo Danner is born with superhuman strength, speed, and bulletproof skin.The novel is widely accepted to have been an inspiration for Superman.

Hugo Danner was the pulp prototype of the modern superman. He was stronger than the mythic heroes of old and nigh invulnerable. He had superhuman speed and he could leap like a grasshopper. He was a circus strongman who put his god-like powers to the task of helping others, which began as an attempt to win wars for his country, but was later focused on holding our corrupt leaders to account for their dismissal of the common man’s struggle. In many ways that description is fitting of the original Superman, but while Hugo Danner arose at the dawn of the age of the superhero, he actually predates all of them. Hugo was introduced in Philip Wylie’s GLADIATOR, a pulp novel published in 1930, eight years before the introduction of his comic book counterparts. Hugo Danner’s origins are much more grounded than Superman’s. He is not sent from the Heavens to protect us and his powers are not naturally gifted by the sun. He actually owes his origins to a much more modern and terrestrial myth: Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN. Like the monster created by the titular character of Shelley’s novel, Hugo Danner’s powers are the product of science. His father vaccinated his pregnant mother with a formula derived from Alkaline Radicals so that their child would be born with preternatural powers. Hugo’s quest to put his power to purpose drives him to join the French Foreign Legion and fight in World War I, but even his strength proves insufficient to mitigate the horrors of war. In what is likely his greatest similarity to the Golden Age Superman, Hugo decides to direct his efforts toward social issues. This runs him afoul of crooked politicians and freedom fighters who are more concerned with their causes than they are with the people those causes are meant to support. GLADIATOR predicts the coming of the superhero by envisioning Hugo as a circus strongman in tights. Though Danner never dons the costume of a circus performer in his exploits, the imagery exists in the book as a subtle proof of concept. In the end, the tragedy of Frankenstein’s monster predicts Hugo Danner’s fate. He travels in search of answers and ultimately succumbs to his own despair. On the one hand, Hugo is faced with the prospect of perpetual personal loneliness and isolation. On the other, he must consider the potential horror of a world where other creatures such as himself are brought into existence. Unlike Superman, whose never-ending battle inspires scores of super-powered imitators who share his passion for two-fisted justice, Hugo has seen how difficult it can be to do good even when you have all the greatest power and all the noblest intentions. GLADIATOR leaves us with the question of how the world might benefit from the coming of a superman. It also gives us room to doubt if such a man could ever be happy here.

Gladiator concerns a scientist who invents an "alkaline free-radical" serum to "improve" humankind by granting the proportionate strength of an ant and the leaping ability of the grasshopper. The scientist injects his pregnant wife with the serum and his son Hugo Danner is born with superhuman strength, speed, and bulletproof skin. Hugo spends much of the novel hiding his powers, rarely getting a chance to openly use them. The novel is widely assumed to have been an inspiration for Superman, though no confirmation exists that Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were influenced by it.

“‘What would you do if you were the strongest man in the world, the strongest thing in the world, mightier than the machine?’ He made himself guess answers for that rhetorical inquiry. ‘I would run the universe single-handed. I would scorn the universe and turn it to my own ends. I would be a criminal. I would rip open banks and gut them. I would kill and destroy. I would be a secret, invisible blight. I would set out to stamp crime off the earth.’” Hugo Danner is the strongest man on earth, the result of a monstrous experiment by his scientist father. Nearly invulnerable, he can run faster than a train, leap higher than trees, lift a wrecked vehicle to rescue its pinned driver, and hurl boulders like baseballs. His remarkable abilities, however, cannot gain him what he desires most—acceptance—for Hugo Danner is desperately lonely, shunned and feared for his enormous strength. An enduring classic in speculative fiction and the reported inspiration for the original comic hero, Superman, Gladiator is a melancholic tale of a boy set apart because of his unique gift and his lifelong struggle to come to terms with it.

First published in 1930, Gladiator is the tale of Hugo Danner, a man endowed from birth with extraodinary strength and speed. But Danner is no altruist. He spends his life trying to cope with his abilities, becoming a sports hero in college, later a sideshow act, a war hero, never truly finding peace with himself. The character of Danner inspired both Superman's creators, and Lester Dent's Doc Savage. But Wylie, an editor with the New Yorker, sought to develop more than a pulp hero. His Gladiator provides surprising insights into the difficulties suffered by the truly gifted when born in our midst.

Philip Wylie's Gladiator is a science fiction novella first issued in 1930. The sci-fi novel is about a scientist who creates an alkaline free-radical serum to progress man by allowing the comparable strong point of an ant and the jumping capability of the grasshopper. The scientist inoculates his expecting wife with the serum and his son Hugo Danneris born with the strength of a superhuman, swiftness, and impermeable skin. Hugo spends most of the story concealing his powers, seldom having a possibility to willingly make use of them.The tale is largely thought to have been an influence for Superman because of its comparisons among Danner and the original adaptations of Superman who were presented in 1938, yet no proof subsists that Superman originators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were inspired by Philip's writing.Philip Gordon Wylie was an American novelist of pieces varying from pulp science fiction, mysteries, social diatribes and humor, to ecology and the perils of nuclear widespread destruction.Philip wrote both fiction and nonfiction, his works contained more than a hundred articles, novels, series of stories, short fiction, syndicated newspaper columns, and pieces of social disparagement. He was also a writer of scripts while in Hollywood, was an editor for Farrar & Rinehart, worked on the Dade County, Florida Defense Council, was a director of the Lerner Marine Laboratory, and at an instance became an adviser to the chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee for Atomic Energy which brought to the innovation of the Atomic Energy Commission. Many of his most important works include critical, although frequently theoretical, insights on human and community as an outcome of his researches and influences in biology, ethnology, physics, and psychology.No less than 9 films were rendered from novels by Philip. He vended the rights for two other novels that were never issued.