David Mason 8 min read

'The Tarchiki were the universe's worst pupils, and as a teacher Duncan was a first-rate carpenter', an old Agent recalls the perfect fool whose every wrong move was, somehow, an education.

David Mason's 1956 story is a wry first-contact and social-SF tale of a bungling emissary. Clever, ironic golden-age SF. Read it for a genial story where a hopelessly incompetent Agent to a savage alien people leaves a legacy no one expected, told with dry humor and a sting in the tail.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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