Alan Edward Nourse 2 hr 44 min read

In a maddened twenty-first-century world, one man's five-year hunt for his enemy drives him into the vaults of the human-vivisectionists.

Alan E. Nourse's 1955 novel follows Jeff Meyer, deaf to the narcotics-mania and gambling fever consuming his society, fixed on a single purpose: Paul Conroe must die. To finish it, he'll offer his own body to the world's most feared experimenters. A dark, driving dystopian thriller from a writer (and physician) with a sharp clinical eye. Read it for feverish, Orwell-adjacent 1950s SF about obsession and a society coming apart.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

2 hr 44 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).