Keith Laumer 2 hr 56 min read

Kidnapped into a parallel Earth, Brion Bayard learns his mission: pose as his own hated double, a dangerous dictator, kill him, and take his place, until he meets the man who wears his face.

Keith Laumer's 1962 novel is a rousing alternate-history space opera, the first Imperium book. Fast, clever, gripping. Read it for a classic parallel-worlds adventure, a man drafted across the timelines to assassinate his own tyrannical duplicate, and torn by what he finds, in a fast-moving, ingenious golden-age tale that launched Laumer's beloved Imperium series.

In its time

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

Reading it

2 hr 56 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).