Keith Laumer 49 min read

'The Consul for the Terrestrial States presents his compliments and regrets he'll be unable', but Retief's aide won't let him decline yet another Groacian recital of interpretive grimacing.

Keith Laumer's 1962 story is a sparkling social-SF space opera starring his interstellar troubleshooter Retief. Witty, satirical, sharp golden-age SF. Read it for prime Laumer, a maddening alien bureaucracy and a vanished predecessor, unraveled by a diplomat who does the one thing the Corps never dares: actually investigate.

In its time

Published in 1962, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

T. A. Smith