James Stamers 18 min read

The first man to reach the speed of light asks the question Einstein never did: E=mc², yes, but what happens to energy divided by the speed of light? He is the answer.

James Stamers's 1962 story spins wry, brainy hard SF from a pilot transformed by his own light-speed flight, now typing his thoughts by nudging an electric typewriter. Clever, playful golden-age SF. Read it for an ingenious tale that runs the famous equation backwards and finds a very strange result.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Thall