Robert F. Young 52 min read

'I'd like to apply for a wife,' the narrator tells the Marriage Administration girl, for in this future, a man under sentence of marriage would be lucky to draw a girl like Julia. Or would he?

Robert F. Young's 1957 story is a sharp, romantic dystopian social-SF tale championing the individual against standardization. Witty, pointed golden-age SF. Read it for a story where state-assigned marriage collides with the stubborn, defiant human heart.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

52 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller