David Mason 11 min read

A scraggly-bearded young man with a toolcase lettered LIGHTNING SERVICE, TV, HI-FI turns up at careful, deliberate Stanley Rapp's door, though Stanley is quite sure he never sent for a repairman.

David Mason's 1963 story is a wry hard-SF and social-SF tale of an unexpected visitor. Clever, genial golden-age SF. Read it for a droll story where an over-cautious everyman's ordinary day is upended by a repairman he didn't call, and a gadget that changes everything.

In its time

Published in 1963, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Adolph E. Brotman