E. G. Von Wald 28 min read

In an era of super culture and hi-psi intelligence, cooperation, even biologically, is unlawful, and love is no laughing matter, as Mark discovers when he spots three people together in the open.

E. G. Von Wald's 1954 story is a sharp dystopian and social-SF satire. Pointed, clever golden-age SF. Read it for an inventive story of a future where togetherness itself is outlawed and human connection made a crime, in a well-turned golden-age piece that pushes the logic of a radically isolated society toward a wry, unsettling extreme.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller