Bruce Elliott 2 hr 46 min read

James Comstock's father finally sits him down for the facts of life, unremarkable, except that James is thirty-five, and still an infant when it comes to knowing what life is really about.

Bruce Elliott's 1961 story is a provocative dystopian and social-SF tale. Sharp, unsettling golden-age SF. Read it for an intriguing story that withholds its central truth as carefully as its hero has been kept ignorant, building toward a hard-won revelation, in a thoughtful golden-age piece about knowledge, innocence, and a world's hidden shame.

In its time

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

Reading it

2 hr 46 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).

Illustrated by

Virgil Finlay