Randall Garrett 42 min read

How could a man tell if all the reality of Earth turned out to be a cosmic hoax, a mere stage set built for students of history? Karnes ducks a pistol shot behind a stack of cement bags.

Randall Garrett's 1953 story pairs a violent chase with a vertiginous social-SF and space-opera premise. Sharp, twisty golden-age SF. Read it for a gripping tale that mixes gunfire and sabotage with the dizzying possibility that the whole world is a fabrication.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Alex Ebel