E. G. Von Wald 31 min read

In the best suspend-field executive's chair money can buy, Hal Webber squirms with unaccustomed tension as his father announces, with a placid smile, 'We've done it.'

E. G. Von Wald's 1955 story opens amid family fortune and a new industrial process, building a wry colonization-and-social-SF tale. Sharp, well-observed golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a comfortable heir's vague unease turns out to be very well founded.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Paul Orban