Jim Harmon 27 min read

Green Captain Gavin faces a screen showing nothing at all, and a cocky veteran spaceman insisting it means transphasia, a deadly scrambling of the senses that only the captain can't yet read.

Jim Harmon's 1959 story is a wry, clever social-SF space opera. Sharp, funny golden-age SF. Read it for a genial tale of a green commander who must out-think his own seasoned crew when a sensory-warping phenomenon leaves everyone tasting sounds and hearing colors, in a witty spin on the command story.

In its time

Published in 1959, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Dick Francis