Ben Bova & Myron R. Lewis 1 hr 42 min read

Dulaq scans the vast gleaming city, knowing that somewhere in it is the man he must kill, or be killed by, and reminding himself that, real as it seems, it is all illusion.

Ben Bova and Myron R. Lewis's 1963 story is a clever, influential hard-SF and social-SF tale. Sharp, inventive golden-age SF. Read it for the seminal story of a machine that lets antagonists duel to the death in perfect safety, all in the mind, until someone finds a way to make its illusory deaths terribly real.

In its time

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

Reading it

1 hr 42 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).

Illustrated by

John Schoenherr