Keith Laumer 27 min read

Consul Passwyn wanted a charming resort posting; instead he's zoo-keeper to confounded settlers on not one world but eight, and it falls to Vice-Consul Retief to cut through the red tape.

Keith Laumer's 1962 Retief story pits the wry diplomat against bureaucracy, blustering superiors, and interplanetary crisis. Fast, funny space opera. Read it for classic comic SF as Retief outmaneuvers the paper-pushers and saves the day across a whole cluster of worlds.

In its time

Published in 1962, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Jack Gaughan