John Scott Campbell 1 hr 37 min read

Shanghai had changed, extraterritoriality gone, the white man's burden on other shoulders now, and beneath the newly edged politeness of 1965, the returning narrators sense something else amiss.

John Scott Campbell's 1955 story is a thoughtful AI-and-hard-SF tale set in a decolonized future Asia. Sharp, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a transformed post-imperial Shanghai frames a deeper question of creation and identity, and the image and likeness of the title carries an unexpected weight.

In its time

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

Reading it

1 hr 37 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).