Stephen A. Kallis 9 min read

'You can see it, you can watch it, but mustn't touch!' General Garvers summons his friend Max to a secured office with a maddening problem: something vital they cannot lay a hand on.

Stephen A. Kallis's 1960 story is a clever social-SF space opera. Sharp, engaging golden-age SF. Read it for a neatly-plotted puzzle story built around a tantalizing, untouchable object of the utmost importance, where the frustration of looking-but-not-touching drives a witty, well-turned golden-age tale.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Douglas