Alan Edward Nourse 40 min read

They told Daniel Carter Griffin only half the story when he volunteered to die: the glories of youth re-captured and love re-won, but never once the lurid second death.

Alan E. Nourse's 1954 story is a dark dystopian social-SF tale of a fatal bargain for renewed life. Sharp, ominous golden-age SF. Read it for a chilling story where the promise of rebirth and free-agenting across the cosmos hides a terrible catch, and one volunteer must face what he wasn't told.

In its time

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

Reading it

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