Leigh Brackett 1 hr 31 min read

'There is someone at the door, sir, shall I answer?' drones the cheap, half-broken servall, while its master lies passed out in his chair, an unlikely hero for the most desperate call in the galaxy.

Leigh Brackett's 1955 story pairs a drunken derelict and his glitchy robot with a galaxy-spanning military crisis. Sharp, wry space opera from a master. Read it for a rousing tale where the fate of Sector 9G, and more, falls to a washed-up man and his faulty mechanical butler.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

1 hr 31 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).

Illustrated by

Herman B. Vestal