Frank M. Robinson 49 min read

Nothing could seem pleasanter than that peaceful planet, so why was a non-suicidal man driven to kill himself there? Templin straps in, brooding on why people take their own lives.

Frank M. Robinson's 1951 story is a taut first-contact and social-SF mystery. Sharp, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a story where an investigator travels to a seemingly idyllic world to solve a friend's inexplicable suicide, and the placid surface hides a menace with a terrible logic.

In its time

Published in 1951, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller