Pst! This is top secret. Don't let it get around, but we've got the Russians right where we want them. They haven't got a secret left to their name. We know every detail. You see, the Russians were pretty sure their inner circle was leakproof, that no one could penetrate their vaults. But they reckoned without--
Today's story is "The Man who Knew Everything," by Randall Garrett. It appeared in the October 1956 issue of "Fantastic" on pages 46 to 59.
Gordon Randall Phillip David Garrett (December 16, 1927 – December 31, 1987) was an American science fiction and fantasy author. He was a contributor to Astounding and other science fiction magazines of the 1950s and 1960s. He is best known for the Lord Darcy books set in an alternate world where a joint Anglo-French empire still led by a Plantagenet dynasty has survived into the twentieth century and where magic works and has been scientifically codified. The Darcy books are rich in jokes, puns, and references, particularly of detective and spy fiction; Lord Darcy is modeled on Sherlock Holmes.
Garrett wrote under a variety of pseudonyms including: David Gordon, John Gordon, Darrel T. Langart (an anagram of his name), Alexander Blade, Richard Greer, Ivar Jorgensen, Clyde Mitchell, Leonard G. Spencer, S. M. Tenneshaw, Gerald Vance. He was also a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, as "Randall of Hightower" (a pun on "garret.") The short novel Brain Twister, written by Garrett with author Laurence Janifer (using the joint pseudonym Mark Phillips), was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1960.
Links
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LibSyn: libsyn.com
"Mesmerizing Galaxy" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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