Raymond F. Jones 35 min read

Can the certain future be made impossible? A scientist drives to Maryland to visit a colleague who may already know the answer.

Raymond F. Jones's 1950 story frames a chilling proposition, that tomorrow's probabilities might be forced into impossibility, around Dr. Curtis Johnson's weekend trip to see the reclusive Dr. Dell, amid uneasy talk of the weapons of the war after next. Thoughtful early-Cold-War SF from the author of 'This Island Earth,' wrestling with determinism and doom. Read it for idea-driven atomic-age SF that hides a sharp question inside a quiet drive in the country.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

John Bunch