Fritz Leiber 25 min read

In a far-future utopia of impregnable, gentle citizens, a pre-civilization small boy nicknamed the Butcher rules by petty tyranny, until he slips into the forbidden Time Theater.

Fritz Leiber's 1957 story is a wry, inventive dystopian and social-SF tale. Sharp, funny, thought-provoking. Read it for a clever Leiber satire where a bratty boy from a pacified future tangles with a window onto the violent past, in a witty golden-age piece that turns a child's tantrum into a sharp meditation on peace, savagery, and civilization.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Diane Dillon