
Part 1
In a future where homicide is almost extinct, a single murder shocks a society that treats crime as a curable disease. The body of an 18‑year‑old student is discovered beneath the overgrown tracks of New York’s Central Park, her death a baffling anomaly in a world where every citizen’s biometric data is catalogued from birth. As the Federal Police—now the sole law‑enforcement authority—take the case, they must navigate a system that has long ago abandoned traditional homicide units.
The victim, Madolin Akkra, lived in a crumbling high‑rise with a father whose outdated attitudes clash with the hyper‑automated world around them. Her enrollment in a spaceship‑maintenance program and the peculiar circumstances of her family life provide the investigators with a maze of social and technological clues. Listeners will follow the methodical, almost clinical, pursuit of answers as specialists in psychiatry, forensics, and sociology piece together a puzzle that could redefine how future society understands violence.
Language
en
Duration
~23 minutes (22K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Original publisher
United States: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1961.
Credits
Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
2023-11-22
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
1888–1975
A sharp, wide-ranging American writer, she moved with ease from mystery to science fiction while also bringing a strong social conscience to her work. Her career stretched from radical journalism in the early 20th century to later stories remembered by genre readers and television audiences alike.
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