C. M. Kornbluth 38 min read

In the year 2046, the lovely, scientifically-bred nurse Markett Travenor watches the chronometer on Floor 24, Ward 5, two hours yet on duty in a perfectly ordered, perfectly regulated world.

C. M. Kornbluth's 1941 story is a sharp early dystopian social-SF tale. Clever, pointed golden-age SF. Read it for early Kornbluth, a chillingly managed future of scientific mating and psychological control, and the cracks that appear in a world engineered for perfect stability.

In its time

Published in 1941, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

38 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

John R. Forte