Damon Knight 16 min read

Maxwell and the girl start their weekend Thursday in Venice, Friday in Paris, Saturday in Nice, and by Sunday they are bored, pushing away their thousand-credit insect-egg breakfast.

Damon Knight's 1952 story is a sharp social-SF and time-travel tale of jaded luxury. Clever, ironic golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a pampered future propagandist, sated on effortless pleasures, encounters something that unsettles his comfortable, curated life.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

W. E. Terry