THE MAN WHO KNEW EVERYTHING

Episode #501 · Randall Garrett · Narrated by Scott Miller

Philip Merriwether has never frightened anyone. He is mild, forgetful, and easily overlooked. Then, without warning, his mind becomes a vault filled with every fact it touches. Questions no longer puzzle him. They answer themselves. What begins as a streak of brilliance on a quiz show becomes something far more serious when the answers drift into military secrets and weapons systems no civilian should know.

The celebration lasts only until the government starts listening. Intelligence officers descend. Generals demand explanations. The President wants to know how a man with no clearance can recite classified formulas from memory. Philip insists he never meant to expose anything. He simply speaks what he knows. But when the knowledge includes hidden bases and top-secret defenses, innocence offers no protection.

This is a story about sudden power in the most unlikely hands. A man once defined by absence must now live with excess. His memory, once empty, is now the most valuable asset on Earth. The problem is not whether he can answer questions. The problem is whether he can stop.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Randall Garrett published widely in Astounding Science Fiction, Analog, Galaxy, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction during the 1950s and 1960s. He collaborated with Robert Silverberg under the joint pseudonym Robert Randall and worked with Harlan Ellison early in his career. Garrett is best known for his Lord Darcy series, a sequence of alternate-history mysteries collected in Too Many Magicians and later volumes, where magic replaces science in a carefully constructed detective framework. His shorter fiction often combined sharp humor with tightly engineered speculative premises. “The Man Who Knew Everything” showcases that precision, turning a single scientific accident into a national crisis with satirical bite.

LISTEN TO THE STORY

Listen to The Man Who Knew Everything by Randall Garrett — a classic science fiction tale where one man’s sudden genius shakes national security.

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