Alan Edward Nourse 24 min read

It's going to be a bad day: dragged from bed by the water-douse, late again, Walter Towne shoves through the crowds toward the plant, dreading the crisis he can feel building.

Alan E. Nourse's 1963 story spins a wry dystopian social-SF tale of labor, automation, and corporate absurdity. Sharp, funny golden-age SF. Read it for a genial satire of a future workplace, where one harried man faces a boardroom showdown of unexpected stakes.

In its time

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

Reading it

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