William W. Stuart 24 min read

After hours in the plush waiting room, Ben Tilman sits fidgety and sour, a fine salesman with a sweet wife and bright boy, irritated at nobody, at the world, at himself, for no reason he can name.

William W. Stuart's 1961 story is a sharp first-contact and social-SF satire of salesmanship. Clever, pointed golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a contented company man's nameless discontent opens onto a biting take on selling, consumption, and what happens when the ultimate hard sell comes to Earth.

In its time

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

Reading it

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