Frank M. Robinson 1 hr 56 min read

A seventeen-year-old copy runner, not yet cynical, walks through Chicago's waking South Side on a fine spring morning, and is jumped in an alley.

Frank M. Robinson's 1955 story grounds its dystopian space opera in vivid working-class Chicago before the trouble starts. Atmospheric, well-observed golden-age SF with a strong sense of place. Read it for a story that opens in the fresh morning of a real city before it turns to danger and conspiracy.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

1 hr 56 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).

Illustrated by

W. E. Terry