Betsy Curtis 13 min read

There's a fortune in a boxer who feels no pain, and this one didn't, the freak natives of Anestha feel nothing, and need a nursemaid to keep them from walking in front of trucks or starving to death.

Betsy Curtis's 1951 story is a wry, thoughtful dystopian and social-SF tale. Clever, humane golden-age SF. Read it for a story of a people incapable of feeling pain, exploited as entertainment and labor, and the protector who watches over one of them, in a sharp meditation on suffering and worth.

In its time

Published in 1951, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

David Stone