Betrayed by his wife, Stephen Stone spirits his son, Henry, away to a remote tropical island and trains him to be an ideal physical specimen and a perfect gentleman. After years of isolation, Henry Stone is now a young man, standing a full six feet two inches tall and weighing 190 pounds. His hair is bronze, his eyes turquoise, his skin mahogany-a magnificent man. When Henry finally returns to civilization, he finds that his father's business has grown into a news empire. Though he is the owner of this huge conglomerate, a great conversationalist and excellent company, well versed in etiquette, and extraordinarily nice, Henry has never seen a woman. Indeed his father has taught him never to trust a female and that love itself is a myth. When Henry collides with the contemporary world and the modern woman, the collision is necessarily fascinating and complicated for both Henry and the society he is discovering.
Philip Wylie (1902-71) was a prolific writer of fiction and nonfiction, and his earliest books exercised great influence in twentieth-century science fiction pulp magazines and comic books, including The Savage Gentleman, which inspired Doc Savage. His books Gladiator, When Worlds Collide, and Disappearance are all available in Bison Books editions. A Hugo Award-winner, Richard A. Lupoff is an author of mystery, fantasy, science fiction, cultural history, and criticism books, including Master of Adventure: The Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs, available in a Bison Books edition.