Frank Riley 45 min read

A century-old courtroom titan cross-examines a juror while two hundred million watch, in a case about what makes a person a person.

Frank Riley's 1958 story fills a hushed, globally televised courtroom as the legendary Jake Emspak advances on the jury box, the whole solar system watching a trial that turns on the nature of identity itself. Polished, dramatic social SF with a strong sense of media spectacle and legal theater. Read it for thoughtful golden-age courtroom drama wrestling with a genuinely knotty question.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Virgil Finlay