John J. McGuire 1 hr 40 min read

Retired Major General Bennington feels both admiration and distaste for the way the politicians maneuvered him, the new warden of Duncannon Processing Prison, feted at a mellowing party.

John J. McGuire's 1963 story is a sharp dystopian social-SF tale of a sinister new penology. Clever, unsettling golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a future prison 'processes' its inmates by altering their very minds, and a hard-nosed new warden confronts what that reform really costs.

In its time

Published in 1963, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

1 hr 40 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).

Illustrated by

George Schelling