Noel M. Loomis 25 min read

'A linotype operator is very near the bottom of humanity, there is only one who stands beneath him: the poet. You are both,' the judge tells gangly, seven-foot High-Pockets, ominously.

Noel M. Loomis's 1952 story is a wry AI-and-social-SF comedy. Clever, funny golden-age SF. Read it for a genial tale of a hapless barnstormer with an uncanny power over typesetting machines, sentenced to a research workhouse, where the mischievous typesetter of the title makes marvelous trouble.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

W. E. Terry