Max Tadlock 10 min read

A man who once swam half a mile his first time in the water, from reading a book, now has an even stranger claim: 'I died once.'

Max Tadlock's 1955 story is narrated by a man whose reading somehow becomes doing, who dreads being laughed at more than anything and longs only to be believed. Eerie, poignant hard SF about an uncanny gift and the loneliness of it. Read it for a haunting golden-age tale narrated by a man no one will credit.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Johns