Alan Edward Nourse 25 min read

When the discovery was announced, it was Dr. Chauncey Patrick Coffin who announced it, having arranged, with uncanny skill, to take most of the credit for the cure for the common cold.

Alan E. Nourse's 1957 story is a wry, cautionary hard-SF and social-SF tale of an over-eager scientist. Clever, funny golden-age SF (Nourse was himself a physician). Read it for a genial story where a doctor's triumphant cure for the common cold turns out to carry unforeseen, and unwelcome, consequences for all mankind.

In its time

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

Reading it

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