Randall Garrett 11 min read

A man comes to on a Manhattan street corner with no memory of leaving a Boston bar, and no idea how he earned the fifty thousand dollars he's suddenly carrying.

Randall Garrett's 1957 story drops the disoriented Bethelman into a mystery of lost time and unexplained money, an amnesia that feels like nothing so much as a very profitable blackout. Brisk, intriguing social SF with a puzzle-box hook. Read it for a sharp golden-age tale that opens with a blank and a bankroll.

In its time

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

Reading it

11 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

Robert Engle