Kill Me if You Can!
What if assassination were a sacred duty? On the world of Apollyon, every five years, the Autarch must die, and anyone may strike the fatal blow. But the ruler has a double, a decoy trained to take the hit while the real Autarch escapes to resume power. When Rad Bartol, an ordinary man of no particular importance, is taken from his simple life and transformed into the Autarch's lookalike, he becomes a target for every would-be killer on the planet. The twist: they might kill the wrong man on purpose, just to prove a point. This is mid-century SF at its most devious, a darkly comic meditation on power, identity, and the value of a expendable double. Garrett builds a chilling world where political violence is both ritual and entertainment, and the real question isn't whether the Autarch survives, but whether the man standing in for him has any say in his own fate at all.
