The Coffin Cure — Alan E. Nourse
Story
A bleak medical future where burial becomes therapy. The “coffin cure” is a sanctioned psychological treatment—patients sealed away to shock them back into compliance. Nourse uses clinical calm to expose how medicine, stripped of empathy, can become ritualized cruelty dressed up as care.
First appearance
Published in April 1957 issue of Galaxy magazine.
Author bio
Alan E. Nourse (1928–1992) was both a physician and science-fiction writer. His fiction obsessively interrogates medicine, ethics, and institutional power, often predicting bioethical debates decades early with unsettling clarity and professional precision.
Death Wish — Robert Sheckley
Story
A man casually wishes for death—and gets exactly what he asked for, via a perfectly legal, perfectly absurd system. Sheckley skewers consumer logic and bureaucratic literalism, showing how desire, once formalized and monetized, becomes a trap engineered to fulfill you to death.
First appearance
Published in the November 1952 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction.
Author bio
Robert Sheckley (1928–2005) was a master of satirical science fiction. Famous for short stories, he specialized in ironic twists, legalistic futures, and social systems that collapse under their own logic—funny, fast, and quietly savage.
