Lou Tabakow 31 min read

If recapturing an escaped criminal is too impossibly difficult, there's a worse thing one might do instead, and a fugitive lies bleeding in the undergrowth, hunted through a nightmare.

Lou Tabakow's 1955 story frames its social-SF tale around a manhunt and a chilling alternative to catching your man. Sharp, dark golden-age SF. Read it for a taut story about crime, pursuit, and a punishment worse than any capture.

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).