Richard Olin 20 min read

A bored man flips through five TV channels one night and finds the same tired face on every one, saying 'Hello, Ernie.'

Richard Olin's 1963 story opens on a listless, beer-sipping Ernie confronted by the inescapable Jory staring out of every station, in a quietly sinister tale of a life gone flat and strange. Eerie, minimalist social SF about tedium curdling into the uncanny. Read it for a creepy, understated magazine story that makes ordinary boredom feel like a trap.

In its time

Published in 1963, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

George Schelling