Bryce Walton 23 min read

From his balcony in the Communal Worker's Center, Brooks turns his gaze and his hate from his wife's flat, ugly face to the moon, the disc of dreams where his Sensory Show adventures await.

Bryce Walton's 1951 story is a sharp psi-powers and social-SF tale of escapism and a bitter marriage. Vivid, unsettling golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a discontented man retreats into vivid dream-adventures with a beautiful star, and the line between fantasy and a darker reality begins to blur.

In its time

Published in 1951, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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