Michael Zuroy 19 min read

Berated by his tyrannical boss for failing to improve the company can-opener, meek chief engineer Kalvin Feetch is about to invent something the world has never seen.

Michael Zuroy's 1958 story is a wry, warm first-contact and social-SF comedy. Clever, humane golden-age SF. Read it for a delightful little story of a downtrodden inventor whose genius finally, unexpectedly delivers, with consequences that far outrun the humble can-opener, in a genial fable of ingenuity, dignity, and corporate folly.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Paul Orban