Gene L. Henderson 26 min read

A researcher wakes blind and broken, groping back toward the memory of the hidden mountain lab and the argument that may have killed him.

Gene L. Henderson's 1954 story surfaces with Mel in total darkness, piecing together the fatal quarrel with his partner over whether their brain experiments needed a human subject. Tense, twisty psi-era SF about ambition and the ethics of the mind. Read it for a claustrophobic golden-age thriller that opens inside the dark of a damaged brain.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Paul Orban