Polymath (novel)

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Polymath is a science fiction novel by John Brunner, first published in 1974 by DAW Books, and based on an original short story by the same author written in 1963.

[edit] Plot summary

A spacecraft filled with refugees from a cosmic catastrophe crash-lands on an unmapped planet. There the survivors must face the reality of their precarious situation; the ship was lost and little had been salvaged from it. Everything comes to depend on one bright young man accidentally among them, a trainee planet-builder ("polymath"). While it would have been his job to oversee all aspects of establishing a successful colony he faces major difficulties; not only is his education incomplete, he had been studying a vastly different planet.