Joe Gibson 2 hr 2 min read

Bill Morrow's hands shake as he stares at the compact chunk of grids and coils floating in the center of the room, a space drive that works, beautifully. Would you give it to the world?

Joe Gibson's 1953 story is a sharp hard-SF and social-SF tale of a world-changing invention. Clever, tense golden-age SF. Read it for a story that asks what an inventor owes the world, where a man who has built a working spaceship must decide whether to share it, and what it makes him if he won't.

In its time

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

Reading it

2 hr 2 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).

Illustrated by

Harold W. McCauley