Richard S. Shaver 18 min read

Old Prof Stegner's selective anti-gravitational field was meant to be a blessing, but when he switched it on, things got big, too big, and too darned healthy, in a catastrophe beyond all prophecy.

Richard S. Shaver's 1952 story is a wild hard-SF and post-apocalyptic tale of an invention gone gloriously wrong. Vivid, imaginative golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a well-meaning scientist's marvel unleashes runaway growth and world-changing disaster.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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