Richard Matheson 11 min read

'Doctor, there is a man in the waiting room who says he made the world,' Nurse Mudde announces, and the goateed Doctor Janishefsky, humming a tune, says by all means, show him in.

Richard Matheson's 1954 story is a wry, clever psi-powers and social-SF tale told as a playlet. Sharp, funny golden-age SF. Read it for a droll story where a small man's grand claim to have created the world proves impossible for his psychiatrist to simply laugh off, from a master of the twist.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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