Theodore L. Thomas 17 min read

Tall, rawboned Jeremiah Winthrop rides the spiral escalator up to his cubicle on the 148th floor, a man of old New England dignity in a world of three hundred and fifty billion people.

Theodore L. Thomas's 1959 story is a sharp dystopian social-SF tale of overpopulation and meaning. Clever, pointed golden-age SF. Read it for a story where one man clings to purpose and dignity in a crushingly overcrowded future, and the good work of the title carries an unexpected weight.

In its time

Published in 1959, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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