A. L. Haley 19 min read

Harper Breen sinks gingerly into the new Relaxo-Lounge, which rocks, vibrates, and massages him so relentlessly that after five minutes he flees in a frenzied lunge for a stationary sofa.

A. L. Haley's 1955 story opens on comic future gadgetry before its AI-and-colonization premise unfolds. Light, funny golden-age SF. Read it for a genial tale that starts with an over-eager massage chair and works its way toward something considerably stranger.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Joseph Eberle