Kid Stuff

"Kid Stuff" is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the September 1953 issue of Beyond Fantasy Fiction and reprinted in the 1957 collection Earth Is Room Enough. Asimov wrote the story in January 1953, intending it for a new magazine called Fantastic, but it was rejected by its editor, Harold Browne. Asimov then submitted it to H. L. Gold, who accepted it for a new sister magazine of Galaxy Science Fiction called Beyond Fantasy Fiction.Jan Prentiss, a fantasy writer is busy at work, when a foot-long talking insect materialises before him. He declares that he is an elf, and is in fact a mutant—a "super-elf"—with new powers that he is still experimenting with. Most of his kind are telepathic. During the last ice age, they used human brains as "psychic amplifiers" to augment their own abilities. However, since the Industrial Revolution, the elves and other related beings have avoided mankind, since they are unable to manipulate electricity, and have retreated to Avalon; an island in the Atlantic ocean cloaked in a psychic shield.