It was expanded to a full-length novel (Bouregy & Curl, 1953), and was renamed The Paradox Men by Donald Wollheim and reprinted as the first half of Ace Double #D-118 in 1955.
[2] The "science-fiction classic"[4] is both "a tale dominated by space-opera extravagances" and "a severely articulate narrative analysis of the implications of Arnold J. Toynbee's A Study of History".
[1] In Trillion Year Spree, Aldiss and Wingrove report the novel "plays high, wide, and handsome with space and time, buzzes around the solar system like a demented hornet, [and] is witty, profound, and trivial all in one breath".
[7] The Paradox Men features the concept of force fields which protect people against high-velocity weapons like guns but not against knives or swords, an idea later used in Frank Herbert's Dune (1965).
[8] In 1953, Harness also published his most famous single story, "The Rose", which first appeared in the British magazine Authentic Science Fiction, then as the main novella in a UK mass-market paperback collection assembled and introduced by Michael Moorcock.