Everett B. Cole 1 hr 1 min read

Some explosives lie inert through any beating or burning, until the one exact shock arrives. A prisoner in Opertal Prison is that shock.

Everett B. Cole's 1960 story crosses the ancient polished courtyard of a prison with Stan Graham, framing a tale of latent, waiting power around a striking metaphor of the trigger that sets everything off. Idea-driven space-opera-adjacent SF with a patient, ticking sense of inevitability. Read it for golden-age SF that turns a chemistry lesson into a study of the moment everything detonates.

In its time

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

Reading it

1 hr 1 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

H. R. Van Dongen