Algis Budrys 44 min read

A man tormented by an overwhelming need for privacy, jumping at windowless walls, turns every personal failure into a triumph for the whole human race.

Algis Budrys's 1962 story studies an aging, sweating misfit whose strange psychology drives great achievements he can never enjoy. Poignant, thoughtful psi-tinged SF about isolation and the cost of genius. Read it for a moving golden-age character study wrapped in a space-opera frame.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

H. R. Van Dongen