Fritz Leiber 1 hr 13 min read

'Quit stalking around like a neurotic bear and suggest something for my invention team,' Fay prods, and the underground-shy Gusterson, with an eloquent 'Hah!', condemns a whole way of life.

Fritz Leiber's 1962 story is a sharp, prophetic AI-and-social-SF satire. Clever, funny, remarkably foresighted. Read it for a story that anticipated the wearable computer and its creeping tyranny, as a casual invention to remind people of things grows into a creature no one can put down.

In its time

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

Reading it

1 hr 13 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Wallace Wood