"The High Test" by Frederik Pohl

First appeared in Shawna McCarthy's Asimov's. Reprinted by Cynthia Manson and Sheila Williams. Selected by James Frenkel as one of Pohl's best.

Summary: 

Jim Paul has a doctorate, but instead of working on a planet with 80% unemployment (his degree didn't help gain employment, anyway), he goes off planet to teach the rich how to navigate their spacecraft--one a rich, spoiled brat; the other a Fomalhautian who seemed the more reasonable of the two. It turns out Jim Paul's initial readings of both students were incorrect.

 

Discussion:

This pairs well with Pohl's "The Mayor of Mare Tranq" and his "Sad Solarian Screenwriter Sam"--both referring to other writers as tributes, which elevate the stories somehow. Here Pohl channels E.E. "Doc" Smith, remotely--even composed Doc's own typewriter. 

It has touches of Doc with the mundane love story and the aliens injected into this larger scope that feels significant yet light and domestic at the same time. Pohl makes it his own--leaning on the informal voice in these letters to home and the lighter aspects of the narrative so the significance is buried. 

While not a major story, it has charm.