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The Beautiful People

The dystopian civilization envisioned in this Charles Beaumont story has eliminated many of today’s “distractions” such as food preparation, books and even the need for sleep. It has also specified uniform male and female appearances to be adopted by undergoing a “Transformation” (operation) upon turning nineteen. A brave girl resists the change, not only putting her job and family’s social position at risk, but also threatening social stability. As she is frog-marched to the operating theater, she realizes the sinister purpose of Transformation… to remove the population’s sense of individual identity. Themes: identity, body shaming, scientific “advancement”, superficial beauty, conformity.

Original Text / PDF / Audio (5,582 words)

Video Version

This film adaption of the story is an episode from Series Five of the famous American TV series, The Twilight Zone. It follows the original plot quite closely, with the exception of the conclusion where we see the startling result of the girl’s Transformation. Watch and enjoy!

[ed. Wow, what a find! I went looking for Isaac Asimov's "Nightfall", which in 1964 was voted by the Science Fiction Writers of America the best short science fiction story of all time. Hoping to find it in the public domain, I stumbled on this amazing site of collected short stories and novellas: xpressenglish.com (see the About page). This story (The Beautiful People) just happened to be on the first page, but there are literally thousands of other stories available. Bookmark and enjoy!]