Samuel J. Sackett 5 min read

'Holderness, you're fired!' Mr. Young roars, storming into Atomic Science Stories waving the first issue, for the contents page is missing the standard disclaimer, and libel suits loom.

Samuel J. Sackett's 1954 story is a wry first-contact and social-SF comedy of publishing. Clever, funny golden-age SF. Read it for a genial in-joke of a tale where a science-fiction magazine's forgotten legal boilerplate, the notice that its stories resemble no real persons, proves to matter far more than anyone imagined.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

5 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).