The Hunting Season
by Frank M. Robinson
For the crime of questioning the State’s hunts in public, huntman David Black is
sentenced to become the quarry in a three-day hunt in the past—the 20th century in this
case.
My own student, David Black, who died unexpectedly in the summer of 2006, would always talk with me about anything and everything. So if he were still alive as I read this (in 2015), we would have a happy afternoon reading it and talking about the social situation the story brings up, or maybe we’d figure out why I’m so attracted to one-against-the-system stories.
You’re much better off than if we had held the hunt in Sixteenth Century Spain during
the inquisition or perhaps ancient Rome during the reign of Caligula. You may even like
it here during the brief period of the hunt. It’s a fairly civilized culture, at least
in a material sense.
“The Hunting Season” by Frank M. Robinson, Astounding, November 1951.