Four centuries in the future, humanity has colonised the solar system and is doing great when an alien race from a capricious and erratically-behaving star decide that the côterie of resource-rich planets around our much more stable Sun will be their new home. After an alien scouting party shows off their superior technology, a lone millionaire physics genius serving in the navy only has limited time to bring humanity's tech up to a level where they can compete with the Strangers. On top of that, he's got to do it single-handedly, and develop not only atomic power, but also faster-than-light space travel and a host of other militarily useful science.

This science fiction short was dated in so many respects that I found it hard to enjoy. First, there's the Van Vogtesque millionaire genius who, largely by himself, invents increasingly hand-wavey technological wonders to the point of ridiculousness (protective magnetic shielding, destructive UV rays, faster-than-light travel, culminating in his harnessing the power of Uncertainty itself). Then there's its naive conception of atomic power as consequence-free (the story was published in the 1930s) and easily neutralised with a "neutron gun". And finally, there's the complete lack of female characters: everyone is a strong-jawed male with a background in the military, and the whole thing reeks of mid-20thC American exceptionalism (historical and mathematical references are to 20thC USA).

A time capsule more than genuinely fun to read. ( )