Charles E. Fritch 15 min read

Sam Meecham, pink, frail, weak-chinned, the very picture of the meek, does not dream that his chance discovery of unlimited power will bring back what he lost eight years ago.

Charles E. Fritch's 1958 story is a warm social-SF space opera of an unlikely hero. Sharp, humane golden-age SF. Read it for a genial story where a timid atomic-engine inspector stumbles onto the secret of a faster-than-light drive, and an ordinary little man is launched on an extraordinary odyssey.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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