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"As the rate of technological development speeds up, the gap between science fiction and what we’re living now is getting narrower all the time."
- Richard Morgan

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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Science Fiction in the News

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'He found a barber shop which, he thought, would be good for an idle hour.'

Humanoid Boxing Robot KO's Opponent - It's A Knockout!
'Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines.'

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'...the excavations were already in progress, for he saw gray slopes of rubble.'

Centipede Robots Down On The Farm
'...the walking mills of Puffy Products began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.'

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'Here is a Clerk that would work incessantly, and neither eat, sleep, want payment, or grumble.'

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'About time you got here,' the astronaut said.

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'...using a neutralizing electronic impulse.'

Solitary Black Hole Wanders In Space
'...the Hole is something like a vortex or a whirlpool?'

Spaceplane From Virgin Atlantic
'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'

DARPA Wants 'Large Bio-Mechanical Space Structures'
'These are your rudimentary seed packages... Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures.'

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