Stephen Marlowe 20 min read

Simon Grover feels like a goldfish in his coptercab's plexiglass bubble, and today the exposure is deadly, as another copter closes in, chasing him toward the roof of the Marriage Building.

Stephen Marlowe's 1954 story spins a tense dystopian social-SF chase from a future of enforced marriage. Sharp, fast golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a small anxious man flees across a crowded future skyline, pursued toward a fate he's desperate to escape.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller