Richard S. Shaver 29 min read

There are rare people bereft of common sense, who fix on an impossible goal and let every obstacle go by the boards, usually sad cases for the funny house, but sometimes discoverers of new worlds.

Richard S. Shaver's 1952 story is a colorful psi-powers and social-SF tale of a driven dreamer. Vivid, offbeat golden-age SF. Read it for a story that celebrates the stubborn fool who won't accept that his impossible goal can't be reached, and the strange horizons such single-mindedness can open.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Sandy Kossin