Stephen Marlowe 1 hr 29 min read

Political boss Darius McLeod leans back and watches the mayor sweat, popping phenobarb and begging to be gotten out of a mess splashed across the morning World.

Stephen Marlowe's 1955 story spins a sharp dystopian social-SF tale from the machinery of a future press and its power over politics. Sharp, cynical golden-age SF. Read it for a hard-edged story of newspapers, kingmakers, and the manufactured scandals that make and break a city's leaders.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

1 hr 29 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).