H. B. Fyfe 9 min read

A large, bearded man in a grimy coverall marked 'Barnsley' sits alone in a pearly plastic cell, feigning simple-minded anticipation for the hidden watchers he refuses to look at.

H. B. Fyfe's 1960 story is a sharp, tense social-SF space opera. Clever, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a taut story of a captive matching wits with unseen alien observers, playing the fool while he probes for a way out, in a well-turned golden-age tale of cunning, deception, and the thin wedge that pries open a door.

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).