Jerome Bixby 31 min read

Spaceship crews should be picked for their non-irritating qualities, Hugh Allenby nearly drove us nuts with his puns. But his classic last one is written right into the annals of astronomy.

Jerome Bixby's 1954 story is a clever, funny hard-SF puzzle-tale. Sharp, ingenious golden-age SF. Read it for a genial story where the first Mars expedition confronts a baffling planetary mystery, holes bored clean through solid rock, and an irritating punster stumbles onto the answer.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

31 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Dick Francis