He was slan.

Human beings had killed his mother. Mankind hated and feared his entire race, regarded them as freaks and artificially created monsters. Mankind had almost exterminated them in the fierce Slan Wars that had left civilization under the thumb of an autocratic world-wide police state.

That much young Jimmy Cross knew. He also knew that -- although he looked almost exactly like everyone he passed on the street -- he was a superior being. And he knew that the slim tentacles half-concealed in his hair were both a source of his superiority and a mark by which men could recognize and track down a hated slan.

Alone and friendless in the world's greatest city, he set out to find his fellow beings and to solve the mystery of his existence.