Keith Laumer 31 min read

Terran diplomat Retief cuts through the fatuous cables of his own embassy to deal with a planet's murderously energetic seventy-five-year-old 'youths.'

Keith Laumer's 1962 Retief story sets the wry, competent troubleshooter against both the pompous Ambassador Magnan and the trying, long-lived Fustians whose Youth Movement is stirring trouble. Sparkling satire of diplomacy and bureaucracy, with Laumer's most beloved series hero. Read it for razor-sharp comic SF that skewers foreign-service self-importance while Retief quietly saves the day.

In its time

Published in 1962, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Burns