R. C. FitzPatrick 27 min read

An old man, very drunk or very sick, sways on widespread legs in the midday heat, clutching a paper bag full of beer, trying to remember which of these houses is home.

R. C. FitzPatrick's 1962 story is a sharp psi-powers and social-SF tale of emotion detected at a distance. Clever, humane golden-age SF. Read it for a story of a future in which machines can sense the surges of human feeling that precede violence, and the 'circuit riders' who race to answer them, in a fresh take on crime prevention.

In its time

Published in 1962, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

John Schoenherr