Evan Hunter 27 min read

A major who hates his commanding officer's sense of humor is sent to Venus to find one particular native, named Joe.

Evan Hunter's 1952 comedy is narrated by an aggrieved officer handed a deliberately absurd assignment by the colonel who's tormented him since the Academy: locate a single Venusian on a whole planet. Breezy, wisecracking pulp with a military-comic edge, from a writer who'd later become famous as Ed McBain. Read it for fast, funny golden-age space opera with a chip firmly on its shoulder.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

27 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).