Bryce Walton 41 min read

Woken in a chilled gray room, a man hears through the thin wall the muffled cry, the falling body, and the voices dragging a 'subversive' away to the wagon.

Bryce Walton's 1957 story opens on a chilling scene of secret-police abduction, sketching a dystopia of casual disappearances. Tense, atmospheric social SF. Read it for a grim golden-age tale where the terror next door is heard through a thin apartment wall.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Virgil Finlay