C. M. Kornbluth 6 min read

Joe had quite a day for himself Thursday, and as usual the narrator had to tag along, a narrator who'd give his right arm for a day off, if only he had a right arm to give.

C. M. Kornbluth's 1953 story, promised by its editor to 'scare the pants off everybody,' spins a creeping social-SF tale from a strange, uneasy narration. Sharp, unsettling golden-age SF. Read it for a Kornbluth chiller whose ordinary surface hides something deeply wrong.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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