Tom Purdom 21 min read

All his life, people have pressed Henry Westing to sign up, the fraternities, the companies, everybody, because everybody belongs to something. But Henry doesn't. And he won't.

Tom Purdom's 1958 story is a sharp dystopian and social-SF tale. Pointed, timely golden-age SF. Read it for a wry parable of conformity and the pressure to belong, following a quiet nonconformist who refuses to join, in a well-aimed golden-age piece about individuality and the group-minded society that can't abide a holdout.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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