C. M. Kornbluth & Frederik Pohl 3 hr 44 min read

The word keeps bobbing up in Ross's mind as he looks out over the spaceport of Halsey's Planet: decay. Something is quietly going wrong across the whole of the stagnant human galaxy.

Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth's 1954 novel is a sharp, satirical dystopian social-SF adventure. Witty, biting, superbly crafted. Read it for the celebrated Pohl-Kornbluth partnership at play, a young man's odyssey across a decaying interstellar civilization, skewering human folly world by world.

In its time

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

Reading it

3 hr 44 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).