Philip K. Dick 35 min read

'Attention, Inner-Flight ship! You are ordered to land at once for inspection!' The speaker rasps through the corridors, and the passengers peer uneasily at the Martian checkpoint of Deimos below.

Philip K. Dick's 1954 story is a taut space-opera thriller of intrigue between Earth and Mars. Sharp, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for early PKD, a tense tale of war, sabotage, and hidden identity, as a routine ship's inspection sets a clever and deadly game in motion above the red planet.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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