Christopher Anvil 52 min read

A man walks into his boss's office wearing a stranger's face and body, a shape-shifting agent handed a galactic mess to clean up.

Christopher Anvil's 1960 story opens with operative Dan Redman noticing his own unfamiliar reflection and the eerie smoothness of borrowed muscle, as director Kielgaard briefs him on a problem born of Galactic Enterprises' expansion. Slick, plot-driven space opera with an espionage edge and Anvil's knack for competent troubleshooters. Read it for brisk, inventive interstellar intrigue with a shapeshifter at its center.

In its time

Published in 1960, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Wallace Wood