Fletcher Pratt 54 min read

The Intercolonial Office wants three people, a photographer, a writer, and a couple, to undertake a mission to the colony world of Tolstoia, and the Director is not going to mince words.

Fletcher Pratt's 1953 story is a sharp colonization and social-SF tale of appearances and deception on a distant colony. Clever, ironic golden-age SF. Read it for a story where an official mission to inspect a model colony proves to be exactly what its title suggests.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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