Joe Gibson 30 min read

A man under police guard in a hospital ward sets out to explain how he came to change the world, with a weapon disguised as a water pistol.

Joe Gibson's 1957 story is narrated from the Recuperating Ward of St. Luke's, its teller aided by the very officer who put him there, unspooling the tale of a 'Cooling gun' and one man's chance to fix everything wrong with the world. A wry, confessional piece of magazine SF with an offbeat premise and a self-aware voice. Read it for lightly comic 1950s SF about the noisy consequences of doing something about the world.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Dick Francis