James Blish 21 min read

On the weekend a Polish freighter lays a nuclear 'egg' in New York harbor, millionaire 'One-Shot' Braun is in the city making another million, and Civilian Intelligence Associates gets pulled in.

James Blish's 1955 story is a clever hard-SF and social-SF tale of espionage and a man who succeeds at everything on the first try. Sharp, witty golden-age SF. Read it for a genial spy-and-science puzzle where a lucky tycoon's peculiar gift may be exactly what a crisis demands.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

H. R. Van Dongen