Frank Riley 40 min read

The definitive history of espionage names no more significant case than that of Dr. John O'Hara Smith, an electronics engineer who changed spycraft forever, and whose secret was known to only a few.

Frank Riley's 1957 story frames its AI-and-psi tale as a suspenseful counterespionage case history. Sharp, clever golden-age SF. Read it for a gripping story about an unassuming engineer whose creation quietly rewrote the rules of spies and counterspies.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Paul Orban