Jim Harmon 31 min read

Newcomer Ben Starbuck taps a junior officer's epaulet and is told 'Get away from me, scum', a fair sample of the brutal welcome awaiting him aboard the inter-atmosphere ship Gorgon.

Jim Harmon's 1960 story is a wry social-SF space opera. Clever, engaging golden-age SF. Read it for a genial shipboard tale of a determined newcomer facing the cruel hazing of a tight-knit crew, and turning their contempt to his advantage, in a witty golden-age story about outsiders, initiation, and grit.

In its time

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

Reading it

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