Harry Harrison 9 min read

Tall Colonel 'Biff' Hawton watches a toy demonstrator hawk the 'Atomic Wonder Space Wave Tapper' to gaping children, and stays behind to learn the trick that makes it really work.

Harry Harrison's 1962 story is a sharp, clever hard-SF and social-SF tale. Witty, pointed golden-age SF. Read it for a neat little story where a seemingly fraudulent toy conceals a genuine scientific breakthrough, and a subversive idea about how to slip real invention past the authorities, in a wry, well-turned golden-age piece with a satisfying twist.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Charles Brey