SLAN

Jommy Cross is nine years old when a mob kills his mother in Centropolis, the capital city. He is a Slan, one of a telepathic mutant people marked by golden tendrils in their hair, and ordinary humans hunt his kind on sight. An old woman takes him in and puts him to work at petty crime, while he keeps hold of a technological legacy left by his murdered father.

As Jommy grows up, he is pulled into the plans of Kier Gray, the dictator who rules Earth. He also learns that the Slans are not united. Tendrilled Slans are the hunted ones. Tendrilless Slans live in secret, run air and space travel, and have settled the outer planets.

His search for the truth leads him as far as Mars. There he has to stop a war among three sides across the planets and face what Kier Gray's rule really is.

This is pulp-era science fiction that follows one character from childhood into adulthood, moving between a hostile city and the wider solar system. It was serialized in Astounding Science Fiction in 1940 and published as a book in 1946. It won the 1941 Retro-Hugo Award for Best Novel, presented in 2016.