Bryce Walton 29 min read

After seventy-two hours without anesthesia, seventy-two hours of raw consciousness and drab reality, Greg wonders how he has stayed sane in a world where everyone lives in dreams.

Bryce Walton's 1952 story imagines a dystopia of drugged dream-continuity, where waking life is the nightmare. Sharp, atmospheric social SF. Read it for an inventive tale about a society that has fled reality entirely, and the man forced back into it.

In its time

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

Reading it

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