Mark Reinsberg 1 hr 5 min read

A man surrenders at gunpoint to a policeman, hands up, glass trickling down his neck from a shot through the windshield, in a world where you compete or you die.

Mark Reinsberg's 1957 story opens on a tense arrest, launching a dystopian tale of a society organized around merciless competition. Fast, taut social SF with an ominous title. Read it for a sharp golden-age story about a culture that has made survival a contest to the death.

In its time

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

Reading it

1 hr 5 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).