by George O. Smith (Author)
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.