Henry Slesar 24 min read

Colihan's personnel computer keeps ordering him to fire good people, so, breaking a company rule, he begins to Think, and wonders whether the infallible machine has quietly gone wrong.

Henry Slesar's 1957 story is a wry AI-and-social-SF satire of corporate life. Clever, funny golden-age SF. Read it for a genial story where a beleaguered manager rebels against the tyranny of a personnel-rating machine, in a sharp, humane send-up of automation, office culture, and the value of a human being.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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