J. B. Woodley 13 min read

On October 10, 2119, at precisely 9:50 a.m., Kyle becomes First Imperator of Terra, his coup so direct and facile that the diarist is almost tempted to believe the old cliché that the time was right.

J. B. Woodley's 1958 story is a sharp dystopian and social-SF tale. Pointed, ironic golden-age SF. Read it for a mordant story of the rise of absolute monarchy in a future world, told through the reflections of a bitter witness who resents the new aristocracy of politics, in a well-turned golden-age piece about power, complacency, and the slide into tyranny.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Knoth