Algis Budrys 59 min read

In the last government office building on Earth, two very different men, an aging leader hiding that he is dying, and a bright young idealist, meet at a turning point for their society.

Algis Budrys's 1957 novel is a thoughtful dystopian and social-SF tale. Sharp, humane, superbly told. Read it for a mature, character-driven story of freedom, anarchism, and the burdens of leadership, where personal mortality and political ideals intertwine, in one of Budrys's probing, quietly powerful early works.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

59 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

John Schoenherr