George H. Smith 11 min read

Dr. Dudley Ballard lies quite dead, head messily bashed in, sprawled in the most secret room of the country's most security-conscious project, and no one can think of a man who had it coming more.

George H. Smith's 1955 story is a clever AI-and-social-SF murder mystery. Sharp, engaging golden-age SF. Read it for a neat SF whodunit set in a top-secret research facility, where a hated man's killing in a sealed sanctum turns on a science-fictional witness, in a well-turned golden-age piece that blends detective puzzle with speculative twist.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Kelly Freas