Review of “Unspecialist” (1960)
Murray F. Yaco (writer).
Read in 2025.
Two highly trained astronauts can’t figure out why a simple farm boy, nicknamed “Bean Brain”, is assigned to accompany them on a cargo hauler in deep space.
The premises are bad, amounting to nothing more than sublimation of the commonplace idea that ignorant farmers are the laterally thinking salt of the earth, but the execution has a charming humility to it. A lot of “unspecialist” characters are just placeholders for a narcissistic audience, one example being Thomas Cole in The Variable Man (1952), and the Bean Brain is certainly that, but unassuming.
References here: “Master of None” (1962).