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"It was [H.G. Wells'] adolescent fiction, his imaginative stories, that live forever - and yet are not acknowledged in literature classes as being great literature. So to hell with the academics!"
- Greg Bear

Mutant  
  A new organism resulting from an alteration in the DNA sequence of its genome or chromosome.  

As far as I know, the first instance of this word in science fiction.

His companion definitely was not human. He was a whole chapter out of a nightmare. Evolution had done its worst as far as he was concerned. Everything about him was unhuman, from the tough warty skin that inclosed him, through the rubbery dangling fingers to the crowning horror of all - a single round, unwinking lidless eye set underneath a broad expanse of greenish forehead.


(Mutants from The 100th Generation)

...Lorn must have been a mutant, somewhere in the earlier generations, that had bred true and increased its divergence from generation to generation.

Technovelgy from The 100th Generation, by Nat Schachner.
Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1934
Additional resources -

Compare to mutation from The Man Who Evolved (1931) by Edmond Hamilton.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The 100th Generation
  More Ideas and Technology by Nat Schachner
  Tech news articles related to The 100th Generation
  Tech news articles related to works by Nat Schachner

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