Manners Of The Age - H. B. Fyfe

Manners of the Age (short story) by H. B. Fyfe
"With everyone gone elsewhere, Earth was perfect for gracious living - only there was nothing gracious about it."

[@allisonschempf2230]

I love this odd little story, even though the protagonist is unbelievably self-centered.

[@RedcoatsReturn]

Mark Nelson is the best story teller of our age. Superb!

[@michaelledford4751]

I'm pretty sure everybody would be self centered to the point of being cruel if we had zero human contact for decades and fleets of robots catering to our every whim our entire lives .

[@maxwellmorgan8014]

That wasn't a complete wash out. It was a chairvoyant situation, and Ilike that .

[@richmcgee434]

This was published in Galaxy in 1952, just for perspective. Manages to be an exceedingly unpleasant vision of a dystopian future despite its age, and not solely because of the casual off-camera rape (which I note Henry apparently didn't regard as worthy of criticism, despite almost certainly being Robert's father). The basic concept is almost worthy of a modern expansion/deconstruction that drills down into the things Fyfe couldn't or wouldn't write about in his day. Whether you'd want to update to modern ideas of future tech is debatable. What little charm this piece has comes from that dated feel.

[@knowone3529]

I am tomorrow..

[@rahvavaenlane]

Good one, not that much off