Sam Merwin 13 min read

Pity the purveyor of mere entertainment: he can't afford to offend a soul, yet must have a villain. On the fastest train in the country, two Hollywood powers meet to decide a studio's fate.

Sam Merwin's 1953 story is a sharp first-contact and social-SF satire of the movie business in a fraught future. Clever, pointed golden-age SF. Read it for a wry story where the impossible demand to entertain everyone without offending anyone opens onto something stranger.

In its time

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

Reading it

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