Ted White Terry Carr 14 min read

He always shook coming out of the Arena, but this time the tension knotted his stomach and salt stung his neck, for he was one of a thousand Citizens on Execution Duty.

Ted White and Terry Carr's 1963 story builds a sharp dystopian social-SF tale around a society of shared, ritualized killing. Tense, provocative golden-age SF. Read it for a disquieting story about complicity and conscience in a world where everyone takes a turn as executioner.

In its time

Published in 1963, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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