Murray Leinster 28 min read

Businessman Jorgenson makes the mistake of caring about right and wrong on the planet Thriddar, where the ruler's word is literally never wrong, and challenging that is the deepest crime of all.

Murray Leinster's 1963 story is a sharp first-contact and social-SF tale of an alien tyranny built on infallibility. Clever, pointed golden-age SF. Read it for a shrewd story where an Earthman's stubborn sense of justice collides with a society that cannot admit a mistake.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Norman Nodel