Robert Zacks 22 min read

Once these laws were passed, any time in history, however bad, became the good old days. Jeb is shaken from bed by his purple-haired wife: get up, earn some credits, or she'll certify you.

Robert Zacks's 1955 story is a wry dystopian social-SF and time-travel tale. Clever, funny golden-age SF. Read it for a genial story where a hen-pecked man in a regimented welfare-state future scrapes for a living as a freelancer, in a sharp comic take on economic control and personal freedom.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

William Ashman