Keith Laumer 21 min read

Harry Trimble comes home pleased as punch with a surprise for his wife Flora, a promotion that means she'll see far less of their cramped apartment, in a world whose four walls hide a terrible truth.

Keith Laumer's 1963 story is a sharp post-apocalyptic and social-SF tale. Pointed, unsettling golden-age SF. Read it for a well-turned story where a couple's ordinary domestic life and a happy surprise conceal a devastating reality beyond their walls, in a mordant golden-age piece with a quiet, chilling revelation at its heart.

In its time

Published in 1963, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

George Schelling