Mack Reynolds 1 hr 56 min read

In Lawrence Woolford's status group, tweeds are in and English tailors out, and this morning his Donegal suit is exactly right, as befits a serious young career man in a rigidly stratified future.

Mack Reynolds's 1961 Analog story is a sharp dystopian social-SF satire of conformity and status. Clever, biting golden-age SF. Read it for Reynolds skewering a future obsessed with keeping up appearances, where a government agent's carefully maintained status masks a deeper subversion of the whole system.

In its time

Published in 1961, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

1 hr 56 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).

Illustrated by

John Schoenherr