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Gladiator
Paperback
Mystery & ThrillerScience Fiction
Publisher: Les Prairies Numeriques
Published: Feb 28 2026
Pages: 286
Weight: 0.85
Height: 0.64 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Gladiator is a science fiction novel by American author Philip Wylie, first published in 1930. The story 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 due to similarities between Danner and the earliest versions of Superman who debuted in 1938, [1][2] though no confirmation exists that Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were directly influenced by Wylie's work.[3]
Story
The story begins at the turn of the 20th century. Professor Abednego Danner lives in a small, rural Colorado town, and has a somewhat unhappy marriage to a conservative religious woman. Obsessed with unlocking genetic potential, Danner experiments with a tadpole (which breaks through the bowl he's keeping it in), and a pregnant cat, whose kitten displays incredible strength and speed, managing to maul larger animals. Fearing the cat may be uncontrollable, Danner poisons it. When his wife becomes pregnant with their first child, Danner duplicates his experiment on his unknowing wife.
Their child Hugo almost immediately displays incredible strength, and Danner's wife realizes what her husband has done. Though she hates him, she does not leave him, and they instead raise their son to be respectful of his incredible gift and sternly instruct him never to fight, or otherwise reveal his gifts, lest he be the target of a witch-hunt. Hugo grows up being bullied at school, unwilling to fight back. However, he finds release when he discovers the freedom the wilderness around his hometown provides, unleashing his great strength on trees as a manner of playing.
Hugo finds success in his teenage years, becoming a star football player, and receives a college scholarship. He spends summers and free time trying to find uses for his strength, becoming a professional fighter and strongman at a boardwalk. After killing another player during a football game, Hugo quits school.
Danner then journeys to France and joins the French Foreign Legion fighting in World War I, where his bulletproof skin comes in handy. Upon returning home, he gets a job at a bank, and when a person gets locked inside the vault, Hugo volunteers to get him out if everyone will leave the room. Alone, Hugo rips open the vault door, freeing the man. The banker's response is not gratitude but suspicion. Hugo is deemed an inventive safecracker who was otherwise waiting for an opportunity to rob the vault. Not only is he fired and threatened with arrest for the destruction of the vault, but he is taken away and (ineffectually) tortured. He withstands all attempts at getting him to tell how he opened the vault, escapes, and lifts a car into the air.
Next, he attempts to have an influence in politics, but becomes infuriated with the state of affairs and the bureaucracy of Washington. Still seeking a goal for his life and a purpose for his powers, he joins an archeological expedition headed for Mayan ruins. Finally finding a friend in the scientist heading the expedition, Hugo reveals his gifts and origin to him. The wise archeologist sympathizes with Danner and suggests some courses of action for him to take. That night, during a thunderstorm, Danner wanders to the top of a mountain, debating what to do. He asks God for advice, and is struck dead by a bolt of lightning.
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