Robert Sheckley 34 min read

A choleric little man grips a revolver and tries to think of one good reason not to murder an acquaintance who merely said he looked well.

Robert Sheckley's 1956 story sends its irritable would-be killer into the machinery of a robotic psychotherapy that may be worse than the disease. Wickedly funny social SF about mental health, technology, and the perils of the wrong cure. Read it for Sheckley at his sharpest, mining big laughs and real unease from a man on the edge.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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