F. L. Wallace 53 min read

Slipping on his jacket, Egan Rains scans the hall before the door. 'I psi,' whispers the pin in his lapel, the emblem of the Psi Astronomers, which he must now, regretfully, destroy.

F. L. Wallace's 1954 story is a sharp psi-powers and social-SF tale of a hunted telepath on the run. Clever, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a tense story where a man with a secret power sheds every trace of his identity, moving through a world where being 'psi' is dangerous to admit.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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