Keith Laumer 1 hr 4 min read

Reading all them books did it, Aunt Haicey warns, thick books with no pictures. But young Brett is set on leaving Casperton, boarding the train out of the only town he's ever known.

Keith Laumer's 1963 story opens on a small-town departure and unfolds into a strange, expansive social-SF and space-opera tale. Inventive, surprising golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a restless young man's escape from a sleepy town leads somewhere far stranger than anyone imagined.

In its time

Published in 1963, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

1 hr 4 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Virgil Finlay