Henry Still 18 min read

Perry Mansfield whistles Stravinsky home from a concert, then, troubled, restudies the program: a modern symphony whose screeching drill-presses he can't bring himself to like.

Henry Still's 1956 story is a sharp dystopian social-SF satire of a hyper-commercialized future. Clever, biting golden-age SF. Read it for a pointed skewering of a society where refusing to love the advertised product is treated as a sickness to be cured.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller