“The Worm in the Well” is an atypical work for him, a story written more in the tradition of “problem solving” by Robert Heinlein and Poul Anderson than in the cold technospace of Arthur C. Clarke, a field more familiar to Benford. Here we are presented with an exquisite adventure, a prime example of "hard sci-fi space opera" that consciously plays with the adventure tradition of space piracy. Benford is working on a novel with the same setting.