It’s said that when beginning a book a reader will allow one major contrivance that will get the story in motion. Well, today’s story by Frederik Pohl (who sadly died last week) has a big contrivance in its setting, from which all of the worldbuilding and plot flows. While I feel this contrivance is a bit difficult to swallow, the world it results in is riddled with absurd perversity.

It starts off with a classic fictional wedding, that of one between two socioeconomic classes. But Morey and Cherry love each other and their parents have assented, so they move into Morey’s many-roomed mansion and spend their copious free time shopping for jewellery and devouring enormous steak meals. But after a while Cherry grows visibly unhappy, and when she backs out of attending the opera for the second week in a row Morey snaps.

“Dammit,” he flared, “this is your home…