Franklin Abel 29 min read

On the day the Earth vanished, psychiatrist Herman Raye was hip-deep in a trout stream in upstate New York, and life, he'd tell you, is real and earnest. Well, that depends.

Franklin Abel's 1952 story spins wry, brainy social SF from a reality that turns out to be less solid than it seems. Clever, playful golden-age SF. Read it for a droll tale that pulls the world out from under a very earnest young analyst.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Harrington