G. Gordon Dewey 17 min read

Newspaperman Larry Maloney signs over his paycheck to the bartender and settles into a booth to wait, a hard-boiled reporter on the trail of a very strange story.

G. Gordon Dewey's 1952 story opens in noir register before its social-SF and space-opera premise unfolds. Sharp, wry golden-age SF. Read it for a story that pairs a cynical newsman's voice with a science-fictional mystery on the solar circuit.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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