Irving E. Cox 1 hr 6 min read

Eddie Dirrul destroyed the message seconds after reading it, yet it seems to burn in his pocket, a coded appeal from an agent of the Planet Vinin: friends hurt, Secret Police, come at once.

Irving E. Cox's 1953 story is a tense alternate-history and social-SF tale of revolution and intrigue. Sharp, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a young man is drawn into an alien-backed conspiracy on Earth, and the noble aims of revolution risk being seized by its basest impulses.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

1 hr 6 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).