Miriam Allen De Ford 14 min read

Known and hated on eight planets across three solar systems, the master criminal called the Eel is wanted everywhere at once, each world eager to try and punish him by its own laws.

Miriam Allen deFord's 1958 story is a clever dystopian social-SF tale of interstellar justice. Sharp, ingenious golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a slippery galactic outlaw's crimes span so many worlds, each with its own laws, that the very question of how to punish him becomes the puzzle at its heart.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

14 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

Diane Dillon