Gene L. Henderson 40 min read

Whatever the country, America, Russia, China, it's just understood that 'we are the most fit to survive, therefore we will.' Don steps into his sealed lab to test the notion.

Gene L. Henderson's 1951 story is a wry AI-and-social-SF tale probing a comforting delusion. Clever, pointed golden-age SF. Read it for a story that takes the smug logic of 'survival of the fittest' and puts it, and its confident believer, to an unexpected experimental test.

In its time

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

Reading it

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