Murray Leinster 30 min read

You're not supposed to believe this, and Sam Yoder will call it a lie, but a telephone lineman tinkering with a gadget for private party-line calls made something that changed everything.

Murray Leinster's 1955 story is a charming, folksy hard-SF and social-SF tale of an accidental invention. Warm, funny, ingenious golden-age SF. Read it for a delightful backwoods yarn where a small-town lineman's tinkering yields a device with wonderfully unforeseen consequences.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Mel Hunter