Jesting Pilot

'''Kuttner, Henry. "Jesting Pilot."' Astounding'' May 1947. Rpt. Cities of Wonder, q.v. under Anthologies and Collections.

"Civilization is an artificial environment. With the machines that were necessary" to save a Barrier-enclosed, post-disaster city preserving a remnant of humanity, "the city became so artificial that nobody could live in it" without going mad and then dying from sensory overload. The solution is to have Controllers who "were blind and deaf and dumb, and lacking in certain other senses," compensated for by telepathy, and citizens hypnotized into not noticing the tumult (Cities of Wonder 60). A citizen glimpses the truth of the city and is motivated to try to leave it (62-63).