Robert Wicks 40 min read

He opens his eyes with no memory of ever seeing, yet recognizes it all, the light panels, the two men in white bending over him. 'What is your name?' Something trips deep inside: 'Paul Chandler.'

Robert Wicks's 1960 story is a taut first-contact and psi-powers tale of a manufactured man. Sharp, unsettling golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a newly-woken being takes up a borrowed identity and a hidden purpose, and the impersonator of the title plays a role more dangerous than his makers guess.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Dick Francis