Robert Silverberg 19 min read

On his birthday, a boy's robonurse withholds the morning unworry capsule and tells him he must, at last, choose.

Robert Silverberg's 1957 story opens in a pampered, anxiety-medicated future where growing up means facing a decision that either choice makes impossible. Sharp, allegorical social SF about comfort, dependency, and the terror of a genuine choice. Read it for early Silverberg turning a simple birthday into a pointed parable of an over-soothed society.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

19 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

John Schoenherr