Robert Shea 19 min read

Raging three thousand feet above Tammany Square, Trooper Lane wants only a little time off, but the cybrain implanted in his skull can't cool him down now, and the lid is gone.

Robert Shea's 1959 story builds a fast military and social-SF tale of a rebellious enhanced soldier defying his masters. Sharp, kinetic golden-age SF. Read it for a gripping story of a fighting man with a machine in his head, pushed one order too far.

In its time

Published in 1959, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

19 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).