R. W. Stockheker 20 min read

Obnoxious celebrity Freddy Booten, dragged to a Bel Air party full of earnest intellectuals, takes a fatal fall for the beautiful Ph.D. Panda, and for Dr. MacCluett's strange synthetic wave.

R. W. Stockheker's 1955 story is a wry hard-SF and social-SF comedy. Fun, clever golden-age SF. Read it for a breezy Hollywood-flavored tale where a self-satisfied celebrity's brush with cutting-edge science and a brainy beauty turns his life upside down, in a light, good-humored golden-age piece with a satirical wink.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Paul Orban