Kris Neville 19 min read

'Hello, Margy,' Clyde says bashfully by the low white schoolyard wall, a shy, sweet exchange that stirs in Margy a small, nameless flutter of fear.

Kris Neville's 1951 story builds a quietly unsettling dystopian social-SF tale from an idyllic surface. Subtle, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a tender schoolyard moment carries an undercurrent of dread about the world these young people actually inhabit.

In its time

Published in 1951, 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

W. L. Marsh