Jim Harmon 31 min read

'Do you think we'll have to use force on Macklin to get him to cooperate?' Ferris asks eagerly, and Mitchell dryly notes the man outweighs the doctor by fifty pounds.

Jim Harmon's 1962 story is a wry first-contact and social-SF tale built on a comic premise. Clever, funny golden-age SF. Read it for a genial story where underfunded researchers need one perfect test subject for a dramatic experiment, and their whole future rides on persuading a reluctant ex-fullback to say yes.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Dyas