Synopsis: The Ugly Little Boy is a short story by Isaac Asimov, published in September 1958 in the magazine Galaxy Science Fiction. The story revolves around a scientific experiment carried out by the company Stasis, Inc., which manages to bring a Neanderthal child from forty thousand years ago back to the present. Locked up in a controlled space and observed as an object of study, the child is assigned to the care of Edith Fellowes, a nurse who begins to relate to him beyond his appearance and origin.
Warning
The following summary and analysis is only a semblance and one of the many possible readings of the text. It is not intended to replace the experience of reading the story.
Summary of The Ugly Little Boy by Isaac Asimov
A nurse called Edith Fellowes starts working at a scientific institution called Stasis, Inc., where a revolutionary experiment has been carried out: bringing a Neanderthal child back from the past using a technology that allows objects and living beings from other eras to be captured. The child, barely three years old at the time of the transfer, is named Timmie. Although he is physically very different from modern humans — deformed to modern eyes, with an elongated head, bowed legs, and an ape-like face — he is also a vulnerable and frightened child.
Edith is assigned to care for him in a closed facility known as Stasis Number One, a special enclosure where time does not usually pass. Still, she is isolated from the temporal flow of the universe. It functions as a closed bubble created by scientists to keep objects or beings brought from the past inside without altering the present or consuming enormous energy. For that same reason, Timmie cannot leave: if he were taken out to the outside world, the energy cost would be so high that the system would collapse and seriously affect the entire center infrastructure.
At first, Edith feels repulsed by the child because of his appearance, but her relationship with him changes over time. Despite his appearance, she discovers that Timmie feels emotions, fears, and affection like any other child. She sees him as a sentient, intelligent, affectionate being needing care and affection. Edith becomes deeply attached to Timmie and feels a maternal connection to him.
Thanks to the media impact of the Timmie experiment, Stasis, Inc. became a thriving research center. News of the existence of a “Neanderthal child,” dubbed the “Ape-boy” by the press, causes a worldwide stir. Meanwhile, Timmie lives isolated in his small artificial environment, with no other company than Edith and, occasionally, Jerry, a modern child and son of the project director, Dr. Hoskins.
Although Timmie’s interaction with Jerry is a form of socialization, their relationship is complicated. Jerry is dominant and treats him with superiority. At one point, Timmie, driven by humiliation and emotional pain, bites Jerry during a fight after he calls him “monkey” and tells him he is not a real boy. Some interpret this incident as a sign of Timmie’s dangerousness, although Edith knows it is a desperate act of emotional self-defense.
As time passes, Timmie begins to develop surprising cognitive abilities: he learns to speak fluently, is interested in the stories Edith reads to him, is enthusiastic about books, and finally, he learns to read by himself. Edith moved and imagined the possibility of creating a special school for him where, despite the physical confinement, he could receive a proper education and broaden his horizons. But when she puts this idea to Dr. Hoskins, she gets a cold and blunt reply: the experiment with Timmie has served its purpose, and now they need to free up space at Stasis Number One for more critical future experiments. They plan to send Timmie back to his own time and world to do this.
The news hits him hard. He realizes that the institution does not see Timmie as a human being but as something expendable. The next project is to bring in a grown man from the 14th century; to do that, they must eliminate the child. Edith, desperate, begins to plan her escape with Timmie. She is convinced that she must get him out of Stasis One and take him somewhere they can live freely.
One night, she tries to carry out her plan: disguise Timmie, carry him out in her arms, pass the security check, and escape. But at the last moment, Dr. Hoskins himself intercepts her. He explains the reasons why Timmie cannot leave the Stasis space. He also assures her that sending him back to the past will not be an execution but a way of giving him freedom. Edith, however, knows that Timmie will not survive alone in a wild world, without a tribe, without protection, and without understanding his surroundings.
In deep despair, Edith asks for a few minutes to say goodbye to Timmie. She hugs him and, as always, reassures him. At that moment, Timmie asks her if she is his mother. Edith moved and told him, yes, he could call her that. She picks him up and, in an unexpected gesture, activates the mechanism that deactivates Stasis One. The two of them disappear together and return to the past.
The story ends with that gesture: Edith renounces the present, her life, and her world to prevent Timmie from being left to his fate. She chooses to live with him in prehistory, to accompany, protect, and give him a life he would not otherwise have had. Thus, the symbolic motherhood she had assumed becomes a real and definitive commitment outside of time.
Characters from The Ugly Little Boy by Isaac Asimov
The story’s central character is Edith Fellowes, the nurse caring for the Neanderthal child. She is a fundamental figure, not only because of her role in the plot but also because of her emotional and ethical evolution throughout the story. Initially, Edith is a competent, disciplined professional with a strong sense of duty, although social prejudices and stereotypes also condition her. Her first reaction to Timmie is rejection, disgust, and discomfort, motivated by his physical appearance and primitive behavior. However, as the story progresses, Edith begins to see beyond external differences and discovers a tender, sensitive, vulnerable, and profoundly human child in Timmie. Their bond transforms into an intense and authentic emotional relationship. From caregiver, she symbolically becomes a mother. The moral conflict of the story is articulated through her character: the dilemma between the scientific and utilitarian view of the child and the humanist understanding of his intrinsic value as a sentient being. Edith is also the protagonist of the story’s radical denouement: she gives up her life and her time to accompany Timmie into the past, moved by a maternal love that transcends biological and temporal boundaries.
Timmie, the Neanderthal child, is the other main character in the story. He embodies the story’s most profound symbolic meaning: he represents the Other, the different, the excluded. From the beginning, he is described in terms that distance him from humanity: his physical deformity, his rudimentary language, his smell, and his almost animal-like behavior. However, the story works precisely to dismantle that first impression. As the story progresses, the reader, like Edith, discovers in Timmie complex emotions, tenderness, fear, a need for affection, the capacity to learn, language, memory, and even an awareness of his loneliness. Timmie also symbolizes the fragility of childhood: he is a child violently taken out of his time, torn from his world, condemned to live locked up, the object of study misunderstood, and marginalized. His development process, from babbling to reading, from fear to trust, shows a full human potential that contrasts with the treatment he receives from adults. Timmie is, ultimately, the mirror in which the cruelty of a dehumanized science is revealed.
Dr. Hoskins is the chief scientist of the Stasis project and one of the most complex characters in the story. He represents scientific rationality, technical progress, and institutional pragmatism. At first, he comes across as an arrogant, authoritarian, and cold man whose interest in Timmie is limited to the experimental and media value he represents. However, specific nuances in his character are revealed throughout the story. He sometimes shows sympathy, concern, and even respect towards Edith and the child. He even accepts that Timmie needs company and allows his son to play with him. However, his final decisions are guided by the institution’s interests. When the child is no longer helpful, he chooses to eliminate him from the present and return him to the past, ignoring his emotional and moral dimension. Hoskins is not a villain but embodies the conflict between science and ethics, progress and humanity. His character contrasts with Edith’s, and his role is key in bringing the values that the story explores into tension.
Jerry Hoskins, the scientist’s son, is a secondary but relevant character. He represents the modern child: he is well cared for, educated, and has access to social life, school, and technology. He contrasts with Timmie in every way: physical, cultural, and social. Although his inclusion in the story seeks an opportunity for Timmie’s integration, it reinforces his marginalization in practice. Jerry is selfish and domineering and shows no sensitivity to the other child’s differences. The relationship between the two ends in symbolic and physical violence when Jerry insults him, and Timmie reacts by biting him. His character also illustrates how prejudice and contempt for otherness can be reproduced from childhood.
Mrs. Hoskins, the wife of the project director, appears briefly but plays a significant role in the story. Her attitude towards Timmie denotes distrust, revulsion, and fear. Although she allows her son to interact with the Neanderthal child, her gesture denotes rejection, reinforcing Timmie’s negative social perception. Her presence shows that prejudice towards what is different is not exclusive to the scientific world but instead forms part of the values and fears shared by society.
Candide Deveney, the science journalist appearing in the story’s first part, serves a contextualizing function. His presence allows the reader to learn technical details about the Stasis project and how the experiment was presented to the world. Deveney is a mediator between science and public opinion, and his perspective helps us understand the media’s impact on the Timmie case. However, he disappears from the story, and his role is limited to presenting the technological framework.
Analysis of The Ugly Little Boy by Isaac Asimov
The Ugly Little Boy is a science fiction story not limited to technical or futuristic elements but delicately delves into a profoundly humanistic question: What defines a person as “human”? Through the character of Timmie, a Neanderthal child brought back from the past using a scientific experiment, Isaac Asimov constructs an emotive, reflective, and critical story that invites us to question our ideas about the value of life, childhood, care, and empathy.
The story is set in an advanced technological environment, where a company called Stasis, Inc. manages to isolate fragments of the past and bring them into the present. Thanks to this procedure, they transported a Neanderthal child who lived forty thousand years ago. The first thing that stands out is that the child is not brought into the present for humanitarian reasons but purely for scientific and media interests. He is not considered a whole human being but an object of study. This is the basis on which the tension of the story is built: a child reduced to an “experiment,” locked in a kind of time capsule, without contact with the world, far from his tribe, without a future, without a past, without freedom.
The human conflict arises when Edith Fellowes, the nurse caring for him, begins to change her perspective. At first, she too feels uncomfortable with his physical appearance, which is far from the aesthetic and biological ideal to which she is accustomed. However, as time passes, this child who seemed “ugly” or “wild” proves to be sensitive, curious, affectionate, and intelligent. Little by little, Edith stops seeing him as an experiment and starts to see him as a real child. Her role changes from carer to mother figure. This transformation is central to the story, showing that empathy is born of human connection, not appearances or social or scientific labels.
One of the most fascinating literary elements of the story is the constant contrast between the scientific and the affective vision. The story confronts two ways of looking at the human being: on the one hand, the scientists, who see Timmie as a specimen, a valuable tool for obtaining knowledge or fame; on the other hand, Edith, who represents an ethical, empathetic, and emotional gaze. The author does not present the scientists as evil but as people trapped in a cold and rational logic that cannot include the value of affection or individual suffering. This counterpoint works well throughout the text and gives depth to the central conflict.
It is also important to note how the story addresses the issue of the “other” of the different. Timmie does not fit into the established models of what is expected of a child. His body, his language, and his history are different, and that is why he is excluded. Society, even children like Jerry, discriminates against him, insults him, and rejects him. Asimov clearly shows that the rejection of what is different is not only born of fear or ignorance but also of prejudice and the desire to maintain certain hierarchies. By calling Timmie “Ape-boy,” they reduce him to an almost animal level, erasing his humanity. This is one of the story’s most powerful messages: human dignity should not be conditioned by appearance, origin, or the ability to adapt to the standards of a society.
From the point of view of narrative style, the story is written in clear, simple, and direct prose. Asimov does not resort to unnecessary embellishments or complex descriptions. Still, he takes care of each dialogue and scene so that the reader feels the passage of time and the evolution of the relationships. The narrative focuses mainly on Edith’s point of view, allowing the reader to change their perception as the protagonist does. This is a very effective device: what initially seems like a story about science and technology slowly becomes an intimate and moving story about love, loneliness, and sacrifice.
Another significant literary element is the use of space. Most of the story occurs inside Stasis Number One, an artificial, enclosed environment where time is suspended. This confinement reinforces Timmie’s sense of isolation and makes his condition as a prisoner visible. However, it also symbolizes the emotional confinement in which the characters live: Edith, trapped in her professional role; the scientists, locked in their rational logic; and Timmie, confined to his childhood world with no possibility of growing up like a normal child.
The story’s ending is compelling and deserves to be read carefully. Aware that Timmie will be eliminated from the present because he is “no longer useful,” Edith decides to escape. But not to the present but to the past. In an act of extreme love, Edith chooses to leave her world to live with Timmie in prehistory. It is not a heroic or triumphant ending but a profoundly human one. Edith does not try to save Timmie from his species or change his historical destiny but accompanies him, protects him, and loves him in the only place where he can be free. As painful as it is generous, this choice turns the story into a powerful reflection on care, ethical commitment, and the value of childhood.
Finally, the story also invites reflection on the role of science. Asimov does not deny its value but warns of the dangers of a science that loses sight of people. Technology can enable incredible feats, such as bringing beings from the past back to life, but if ethical principles do not guide it, it can become cruel. In this sense, The Ugly Little Boy is not just a story about a time travel experiment but a warning about how we treat the most vulnerable when we allow knowledge to advance without compassion.
