Charles Dye 22 min read

The plagues that struck mankind could all be traced to one man, but was he fiend or savior? It begins with banked blood, a woman dead in childbirth, and a syndrome no one can explain.

Charles Dye's 1951 story is a sharp post-apocalyptic and social-SF tale of engineered pandemic. Clever, provocative golden-age SF. Read it for a story that traces a chain of deadly plagues back to a single mysterious figure, and asks whether his terrible work might, in the end, be humanity's salvation.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller