Tom Pace 10 min read

The Fifth Sector Commander was known as a rigid man, and yet no one could say exactly how rigid, until the day his own comically self-important superior appeared badly shaken on the screen.

Tom Pace's 1946 story builds a taut space-opera character study around an unbending commander and a crisis that will test just how far he'll go. Sharp, well-drawn golden-age SF. Read it for a story about discipline, authority, and the example a truly rigid man is willing to set.

In its time

Published in 1946, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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