Extollager
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#52 is Margaret St. Clair's "Rations of Tantalus" from Conklin's paperback anthology Worlds of When (Pyramid, 1962).
The story originally appeared in Fantastic Universe, July 1954.
Mr. Harvey lives lovelessly and peacefully with his beautiful wife Mara in a society whose calm is occasionally broken when someone loses control and ducks under cover to give way to a Rage fit. Harvey yearns to increase his dosage of euphoria medication because unhappiness gnaws at him. To his alarm, he finds his passions aroused, unintentionally for both of them, by proximity to a woman who declines the drugs that control female physiology and even perspiration. He has to decide whether to settle for a predictable, drug-dependent and conformist way of life, or to venture into a riskier future for himself and Mara by flushing away their meds. 3/5
The story originally appeared in Fantastic Universe, July 1954.
Mr. Harvey lives lovelessly and peacefully with his beautiful wife Mara in a society whose calm is occasionally broken when someone loses control and ducks under cover to give way to a Rage fit. Harvey yearns to increase his dosage of euphoria medication because unhappiness gnaws at him. To his alarm, he finds his passions aroused, unintentionally for both of them, by proximity to a woman who declines the drugs that control female physiology and even perspiration. He has to decide whether to settle for a predictable, drug-dependent and conformist way of life, or to venture into a riskier future for himself and Mara by flushing away their meds. 3/5