Evelyn E. Smith 23 min read

Ludovick Eversole sits in golden sunshine outside his house, writing a poem, watching the slow street flow gently past, content in a peaceful, provided-for world that is not quite what it seems.

Evelyn E. Smith's 1958 story is a wry, clever dystopian social-SF tale of a too-perfect utopia. Sharp, ironic golden-age SF. Read it for a genial story where a placid, poetry-writing innocent is drawn out of his idyll and into the machinery hidden behind his gentle, comfortable world.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Dick Francis