Walter S. Tevis 17 min read

'Let me show you something,' Farnsworth says, waddling off to his basement, and returns with a small box holding a little gray ball that does not, quite, obey the ordinary laws of bouncing.

Walter S. Tevis's 1958 story is a sharp, witty hard-SF tale of a deceptively simple marvel. Clever, ominous golden-age SF (by the author of 'The Hustler'). Read it for a genial story where an eccentric inventor's endlessly bouncing ball reveals an escalating menace hidden in a schoolboy's law of physics.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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