Keith Laumer 34 min read

Ambassador Nitworth announces grim news: the warlike Qornt, vanished for two centuries, have reappeared, occupying supposedly Terrestrial territory, and it falls to the wry Retief to sort it out.

Keith Laumer's 1963 Retief story pits the sardonic diplomat against a returned alien menace and his own bumbling superiors. Fast, funny military space opera. Read it for classic comic SF as Retief cuts through bureaucratic bluster to face down the mighty Qorn.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Jack Gaughan