Charles Minor Blackford 32 min read

Hidden in the underbrush, the wild outsider Henry watches a ragged band of near-identical young people pass, plump, dull-eyed cousins all, and knows his hideaway is invaded once again.

Charles Minor Blackford's 1961 story is a thoughtful dystopian and post-apocalyptic tale. Sharp, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a story of a lone nonconformist watching a placid, homogenized future society from the shadows, in a probing golden-age piece about individuality, conformity, and the masters who shaped a docile world.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Bob Ritter