Question: Searching for a story I read many years ago. I think the premise was that one man was treated as though he was a genius, but later discovered the rest of humanity had evolved far beyond him. He was treated specially so he would not feel bad about himself.

Might have been a short story in a magazine or anthology. Thanks for any help!

Answer: 
["Kindness"](https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?47571) by [Lester del Rey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_del_Rey), first published in [*Astounding Science Fiction*, October 1944](https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?57642+c), available at the [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/stream/Astounding_v34n02_1944-10_dtsg0318-LennyS#page/n79/mode/2up). Does any of [these covers](https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/titlecovers.cgi?47571) look familiar?

In del Rey's story, Danny Black is the last surviving *Homo sapiens* in a world of supermen:

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> *Homo sapiens!* The type of man who had come out of the caves and built a world of atomic power, electronics and other old-time wonders—thinking man, as it translated from the Latin. In the dim past, when his ancestors had owned the world, they had made a joke of it, shortening it to homo sap, and laughing, because there had been no other species to rival them. Now it was no longer a joke.  
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> Normal man had been only a "sap" to *homo intelligens*—intelligent man—who was now the master of the world. Danny was only a left-over, the last normal man in a world of supermen, hating the fact that he had been born, and that his mother had died at his birth to leave him only loneliness as his heritage.
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Danny does not think he is a genius; he is painfully aware of his inferiority, although the supermen go to great lengths to treat him kindly and give him a make-work job. In the end, he thinks he has outwitted them by stealing an old rocket ship and escaping into space:

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> The note might be ten years or half a dozen centuries old—but his people had been here, fighting on and managing to live, after Earth had been lost to them. If they could, so could he!  
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Meanwhile, back on Earth:

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> "Well, he swallowed our lies and ran off with the ship we built him. I hope he's happy, for a while at least."
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Perhaps you're looking for [Caliban](https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?58602) by Robert Silverberg, first published in 1972. Here's a short summary:

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> It's 2103 and people can change their bodily appearance practically at will. Everyone has chosen (this month) to be sleek-skinned, athletic, blue-eyed blondes. Into this world comes a man born in 1967, with all his bodily flaws, lumpy nose, dark hair, and quaint attitudes. He's a renowned curiosity, the world's greatest novelty, and gets to have sex with many women. But popularity in this world has a price ...  
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> [Source](http://www.majipoor.com/work.php?id=126)
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