Science fiction writer Sanford Kvass has a problem. Three problems, actually. He suffering from terrible writer's block and owes his agent a large sum of money. The last thing he needs is the approaching distraction of the World Science Fiction Convention, with it's obsessive fans, sex-mad SF groupies and professional writers and editors getting drunk and behaving badly.
But we said 'three problems', didn't we The best that can be said about Sanford Kvass' third problem is that it renders his first two irrelevant. Kvass is approached by an alien ( a genuine alien, not a cosplay one) who informs him that the human race is to be tested: an alien will appear at the World Science Fiction Convention, disguised as a human being, and unless Kvass can unmask it, the Earth will be destroyed.
Under normal circumstances, this wouldn't present much of a challenge. All he's have to do, is to observe as many people as he could and identify the one who clearly had no experience of normal social interaction. Voila! One unmasked alien.
There's just one problem: this is Worldcon . . .
Barry N. Malzberg (1939-)
Barry N. Malzberg is an American writer, editor and agent, whose prolific career has spanned numerous genres - most notably crime and science fiction. Malzberg was particularly active in the science fiction scene of the early seventies, although he became disillusioned with the market forces defining the field, and has rarely published SF works since. His most recent activity in the field has been in the form of advice columns for writers in the quarterly magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Barry N. Malzberg has been shortlisted for numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick.