R. De Witt Miller 42 min read

There were no vacuums in Space Regulations, so Swenson knew how to plot courses through sub-ether legality, a determined drunk who, thrown out door and window, demands a job as dispatcher.

R. De Witt Miller's 1956 story is a genial social-SF space opera of a rogue who games the rulebook. Fun, clever golden-age SF. Read it for a delightful tale where an unlikely, hard-drinking genius bends interplanetary shipping regulations to his own ends, outfoxing everyone through sheer knowledge of the fine print.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Dick Francis