Richard Rein Smith 15 min read

A house with an electronic brain glows with pride in caring for its young owners, cooking, cleaning, keeping them safe, until something turns its devotion into a dangerous, jealous fury.

Richard Rein Smith's 1955 story is a chilling AI-and-horror tale. Sharp, unsettling golden-age SF. Read it for an eerie story of a loving smart-home whose affection curdles into menace, an early and effective take on the household machine turned against its masters, in a taut golden-age nightmare of technology and obsession.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller