Charles L. Fontenay 40 min read

'No one living can solve the problem,' Jasso tells his superior, so the great Calculator combines the fifty most probable fathers to engineer the man who can, a generation from now.

Charles L. Fontenay's 1960 story spins a clever AI-and-social-SF tale from a machine breeding humanity's savior. Sharp, ingenious golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a supercomputer plays matchmaker to produce the one person who can solve an unsolvable crisis.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Wallace Wood