Laurence M. Janifer 16 min read

The register says Mr. John P. Jones is in Room 1014, but Fredericks knows better, his man isn't there, his name isn't Jones, and his real gift is what the FBI files call psi powers.

Laurence M. Janifer's 1962 story is a sharp first-contact and social-SF tale of a manhunt for a psychic superman. Clever, tense golden-age SF. Read it for a taut cat-and-mouse story where an ordinary agent chases a man who always knows better, always does better, and can never quite be caught.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

John Schoenherr