Malcolm Jameson 21 min read

Smug, self-satisfied sales manager J. C. Chisholm, sure he is the best little sales manager his firm ever had, is about to receive an unexpected gift, the power to see himself as others see him.

Malcolm Jameson's 1943 story is a wry fantasy and social-SF tale. Clever, pointed golden-age SF. Read it for a genial fable, its title drawn from Burns ('to see oursels as others see us'), where a pompous man gains sudden, uncomfortable self-knowledge, in a witty golden-age piece about vanity, humility, and the gift of true perspective.

In its time

Published in 1943, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Frank Kramer