R. R. Winterbotham 12 min read

A snarling voice from an incoming ship threatens to blast his atmosphere plant to star dust, but Oridin the Recluse, keeper of a coveted secret, only shrugs and bids the fool land.

R. R. Winterbotham's 1943 story is a colorful hard-SF space opera of a hermit inventor and the greedy men who come for his secret. Vivid, wry golden-age pulp. Read it for a story where an unruffled recluse deals, in his own quiet way, with those who threaten him for a coveted formula.

In its time

Published in 1943, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Joseph Doolin