Jim Harmon 22 min read

Anybody who shuns a Cure needs his head examined, assuming he has one left. Henry Infield settles the insulated lightning-rod circlet on his head and prepares to face the world.

Jim Harmon's 1956 story is a wry dystopian social-SF satire of a society where everyone wears the outward signs of their neuroses. Clever, funny golden-age SF. Read it for a droll story about a future that treats mental quirks by making patients act them out in public.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Weiss