Evelyn E. Smith 36 min read

Zen the Omnipotent, elected a god and worshipped for centuries, is also Zen the All-Put-Upon, a galactic sucker, and he longs, on his one day off, for a little genuine supernatural power.

Evelyn E. Smith's 1955 story is a witty social-SF space opera comedy. Clever, funny golden-age SF. Read it for a genial farce where a weary, put-upon planetary 'god' and a stranded princess and physicist tangle in a delightful send-up of divinity, science, and the burdens of being worshipped.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Sandy Kossin