Rog Phillips 1 hr 43 min read

'Victor!' Her voice shatters the cathedral silence around the vast case of the Brain, echoing through a maze of catwalks beneath the atom-proof dome built to last as long as the Earth.

Rog Phillips's 1953 story is an atmospheric AI-and-time-travel tale of a world-ruling machine. Vivid, ominous golden-age SF. Read it for a story set in the shadow of a colossal computer brain, the Cyberene, where the fate of humanity turns on what happens in its cathedral-vast chamber.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

1 hr 43 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).

Illustrated by

W. E. Terry