Andrew Fetler 31 min read

'Erase his memory, give him a new name, feed him more patriotism, very simple,' the roly-poly Pashkov soothes, as a typewriter clicks behind the guarded villa of the famous Boris Knackenpast.

Andrew Fetler's 1963 story is a wry dystopian social-SF and Cold War satire of dueling master spies. Clever, funny golden-age SF. Read it for a genial send-up of espionage where two rival spymasters tangle over a celebrated author who may be nothing but a manufactured robot, and neither will let go.

In its time

Published in 1963, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Norman Nodel