Richard Maples 28 min read

A newspaperman sees a young six-footer methodically, cold-bloodedly beating an old man to the pavement, and, not being a hero but knowing right from wrong, drops the bruiser with a single punch.

Richard Maples's 1955 story is a sharp first-contact and social-SF tale. Clever, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a story that opens on a brutal, senseless assault and unfolds a stranger truth behind it, where a reporter's decent instinct draws him into the mystery of the scapegoat.

In its time

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

Reading it

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