The Black Hole Express

The Perfect World exists in the far distant future and is ruled by an old man called the Grand Exterminator. In this heavily polluted world people wear oxygen masks and silver vinyl jump suits. They’ve never seen flowers or grass. Robots do their work and their thinking. Many laws exist, but the chief prohibition is against passion. Anyone who talks of love or acts on feelings of love or passion is exterminated—reduced in seconds to a few particles of dust.

Jack Goddard, a young physicist, a...