Arnold Castle 23 min read

Frank Pembroke sits in his shabby office above a liquor store, awaiting his first customer, and when a tall, smooth-faced figure climbs the stairs, Pembroke quietly draws a silenced pistol.

Arnold Castle's 1961 story is a sharp dystopian social-SF tale. Clever, unsettling golden-age SF. Read it for a story that opens on a chilling premise, a business that answers a strange advertisement with a bullet, and unfolds a pointed reckoning with conformity, perfection, and the price of fitting in.

In its time

Published in 1961, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Leo Summers