Today, I read To Tell at a Glance, a short mystery; it can be found in “The Winds of Change and Other Stories”, by Isaac Asimov. I found Asimov’s actual writing wonderful; he drew me into the plot and told me of the situation without having to explain any of the history behind the events from a point of view other than the narrator’s; a relatively difficult task, as the story, typical of Asimov, is set in a completely different world and time. I found his writing extremely skillful, but in introducing the story’s setting so that readers would know the intricacies of the plot beforehand, he revealed the crucial clue to the mystery and capitalized on it noticeably, so that it isn’t impossible to figure out beforehand how the main character, Elaine, realizes who the impostor is; in the story, there are thirteen “Orbital Worlds”, and Elaine wants them to form a union and gain independence. She lives on the Orbital World Gamma and is providing a tour for five tourists, one of whom (her informer believes) is someone from Earth who wants to sabotage the union by sabotaging Gamma, where the union’s strongest members are; however, as each is from a different Orbital World and the others are probably important members of their own worlds, simply detaining each of them would offend the others and further delay the independence Elaine and her group desire. Though the mystery was solved easily, Asimov wrote the plot and story behind it with skill, and I would rate it 9.5/10. I recommend it to anyone who likes mystery, Asimov, or science fiction.
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