Betsy Curtis 1 hr 14 min read

Dr. Warner bursts into his superior's office, 'Two suicides at once, in Block Nineteen!', in a hospital, and a world, where the very old have grown quietly, deliberately weary of endless life.

Betsy Curtis's 1950 story is a thoughtful colonization and social-SF tale of longevity. Sharp, humane golden-age SF. Read it for a story where medicine has extended human life enormously, and a rash of suicides among the old ones forces a reckoning with what such an unnaturally long existence really costs.

In its time

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

Reading it

1 hr 14 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Ramon Raymond