Mack Reynolds 1 hr 51 min read

Against long odds, Ronny Bronston wins a personal interview with the Commissariat of Interplanetary Affairs, for a job that could send him among the far-flung, secretive human worlds of the galaxy.

Mack Reynolds's 1961 story, set in his United Planets future, is a sharp social-SF space opera. Clever, thoughtful golden-age SF. Read it for an inventive Reynolds tale of interstellar intrigue and social speculation, where a determined young man is drawn into the shadowy business of monitoring humanity's scattered, divergent colony worlds, in idea-rich golden-age SF.

In its time

Published in 1961, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

1 hr 51 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).

Illustrated by

John Schoenherr