Leo P. Kelley 42 min read

An America of tomorrow with no more school, no more art, no more enterprise or intellect, a nation of hedonists. And in such a land, how could there be malcontents?

Leo P. Kelley's 1955 story, a prize-winning college contest entry, sketches a chilling dystopia of engineered pleasure and vanished ambition. Sharp, pointed social SF. Read it for a young writer's dark vision of a future lulled into blissful, thoughtless contentment.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Leo Summers