William W. Stuart 25 min read

A man wakes in a grey fog of not-quite-consciousness, sure only that he is a man, and that opening his eyes can wait.

William W. Stuart's 1962 Kafka-esque tale traps its Everyman in the miasmic borderland between sleep and waking, exploring the pull of the safe, horrible known over the terrifying unknown. Unsettling, allegorical social SF with a literary ambition beyond its pulp home. Read it for a strange, philosophical magazine story about the prisons we build for ourselves.

In its time

Published in 1962, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

25 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Virgil Finlay