Stephen Marlowe 35 min read

Wearing the body of a dignified, pince-nez'd old Sirian gentleman, the roving agent Johnny Mayhem arrives on sweltering Ophiuchus IX, ignoring the laughing loiterers, on his latest deadly mission.

Stephen Marlowe's 1957 story is a rousing psi-powers space opera, a Johnny Mayhem tale. Vivid, imaginative golden-age SF. Read it for a colorful entry in the beloved Johnny Mayhem series, a disembodied hero who lives by borrowing the bodies of the dead, sent to solve a lethal puzzle across the galaxy, in fast-moving, inventive golden-age adventure.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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