William P. McGivern 27 min read

A slow morning in the theatrical-bookings trade sends the narrator drifting upstairs to the Daily Standard, where he waits in the empty office of the columnist who writes 'The Soldier's Friend.'

William P. McGivern's 1943 story is a wry hard-SF and social-SF tale with a wartime setting. Clever, genial golden-age SF. Read it for a breezy story where a small-time booking agent stumbles onto a most unusual man, whose remarkable talent for blending in proves stranger than any stage act.

In its time

Published in 1943, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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