Poul Anderson 45 min read

Suppose the associations that make us love a person could be altered artificially, at the option of whoever ran the process. Colin Fraser meets bright young Judy Sanders, and everything follows.

Poul Anderson's 1953 story is a sharp, unsettling psi-powers and social-SF tale of engineered emotion. Clever, thought-provoking golden-age SF. Read it for a story that asks what love and loyalty are worth if they can be manufactured, with a moral sting beneath its smooth premise.

In its time

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

Reading it

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