Fred Sheinbaum 16 min read

In 1998, the management team recites the Consumer's Pledge each Thursday while the common herd works a twenty-one-hour week, and an assistant VP flies home in his new Buick Skymaster helicopter.

Fred Sheinbaum's 1957 story sketches a satirical social-SF future built on relentless consumption and status. Sharp, funny golden-age SF. Read it for a wry send-up of a consumer paradise where buying is a patriotic duty and the good life is measured in chrome.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Paul Orban