Mack Reynolds 42 min read

Freedom is a very dangerous thing indeed, so catching, like a plague, that even the doctors get it. And Colonel Ilya Simonov of the Soviet security ministry is about to be exposed.

Mack Reynolds's 1961 story sends a state security officer to root out subversion, only to face the contagion of the very idea he's hunting. Sharp, ironic Cold War social SF. Read it for a clever tale about a loyal enforcer and the dangerous, catching notion of liberty.

In its time

Published in 1961, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

John Schoenherr