Joe Love 23 min read

Quiet, mousy Isobel d'Larte is on trial for murdering her husband, 'not Isobel,' say her friends, 'too mousey', but the whispering town has already convicted her.

Joe Love's 1954 story frames an AI-and-social-SF tale as a murder trial with a strange machine at its heart. Sharp, ironic golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a seemingly meek woman's alleged crime opens onto a chilling question about machines and their makers.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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