Charles L. Harness & Theodore L. Thomas 29 min read

'Sometimes a patent case gets away from you,' muses Helix Spardleton, patent attorney extraordinary, feet up and cigar in the Contemplation Position, as evening settles over Washington.

Charles L. Harness and Theodore L. Thomas's 1962 story is a clever hard-SF and social-SF tale of invention and law. Sharp, ingenious golden-age SF. Read it for a genial patent-office yarn, written by two authors who were themselves patent attorneys, where a peculiar case opens onto a genuinely science-fictional puzzle.

In its time

Published in 1962, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

John Schoenherr