Robert Sheckley 18 min read

A jovial family man with a wife, kids, a good job, and every luxury of the age kills himself, and his neighbor wonders, uneasily, why.

Robert Sheckley's 1952 story opens on a suicide and a puzzle before revealing a future of auto-cooks and finance men, where the true price of gracious living is mortgaged generations deep. Sharp, prescient consumer-culture satire. Read it for a wickedly pointed golden-age dystopia about debt, comfort, and what it really costs to live.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller