David Ely 18 min read

To bring down the pretentious 'culture-mongers' of the art world, the eccentric old Dr. Browl needs no thunderbolt, merely a monstrous easel, and a very peculiar plan.

David Ely's 1962 story is a wry hard-SF and social-SF satire. Clever, witty golden-age SF. Read it for a sharp, amusing story where a mocked old inventor turns a strange device against the smug gatekeepers of high art, in a satirical golden-age piece, by the author of Seconds, that skewers pretension with a science-fictional flourish.

In its time

Published in 1962, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Dan Adkins