Jesse F. Bone 33 min read

Laid up with an unscratchable broken leg and stuck with the despised Wolverton for company, the narrator plots against a being he'd promise anything to destroy, the Father of Evil himself.

Jesse F. Bone's 1960 story is a sharp colonization and first-contact tale. Clever, ironic golden-age SF. Read it for a wry story of an Earthman scheming to slay an alien 'devil,' convinced the killing would leave him holier, in a well-turned golden-age piece about zealotry, self-justification, and the missionary impulse turned deadly.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller