This story won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story at the 1964 World Science Fiction Convention in Oakland, CA. It was one of the key works in establishing Anderson’s reputation both as an outstanding master of science fiction and as a champion of individual freedom.

The story opens at the start of a civil war about three centuries after a late 20th century nuclear war. The western US, the Pacific States of America, have achieved roughly a late 19th century level of technology, though it’s stated that what's lacking are resources (oil, etc.), not knowledge.

The action is centered around two individuals, Col. Tom Mackenzie and his second-law, Capt. Tom Danielis, who choose opposing sides in conflict. Mackenzie takes the conservative, constitutionalist view that no ends, no matter how noble, can justify improper means, while Daniels represents the impatient viewpoint of modern liberalism, demanding power and central authority over men, “strong enough to make them behave.”

One reason the story is so powerful is that both characters are presented as good men who end up trying to destroy each other. The third element, which makes this story exceptional is the presence of aliens, secretly attempting to manipulate the future development of mankind in accordance with their “Great Science” of psychohistory. They hope to create a universal world state which would eventually descend into despotism and produce an internal proletariat which would be receptive to the aliens’ goal of “a communal, anti-materialistic social group, to which more and more people will turn for sheer lack of anything else”. These aliens come across as the ultimate self-righteous planners, willing to cause tremendous pain and suffering in the pursuit of the greatest good and the greatest number. While they agonize over the suffering they are causing, they are supremely confident in the ultimate wisdom of their goals.

The pace of the story is fast and exciting, with Mackenzie discovering the truth about the Espers in the course of the war. Eventually, the conservatives triumph and the aliens are exposed and captured, leading to the strongest scene in the story. After the aliens explain their desire to “help” mankind they beg the victors to conceal their existence and help them carry out their plans for the future of mankind. Speyer, Mackenzie’s adjutant contemptuously rejects them: “You wanted to re-establish the centralized state, didn’t you? Did you ever stop to think that maybe feudalism is what suits man? Some one place to call our own, and belong to, and be part of; a community with traditions and honor; a chance for the individual to make decisions that count; a bulwark for liberty against the central overlords, who’ll always want more and more power; a thousand different ways to live.”

Andersen populates his stories win real people reacting in realistic ways to the crises they face. This is some of the best-written sf around, particularly if you like it with a libertarian viewpoint.

Malzberg’s brief story leaves an unsettling echo. A young person befriends an old man, who tells tales of the past when people were free to act as they chose, before the advent of the current leadership of the statist-like bureau.

The skeptical, young narrator insists people in his day are free. There are some controls he admits, but they do have their ‘Free Day’, when they are permitted to do as they please as long as they remain within prescribed limits.

These conversations are almost as forbidden as the thoughts they sow. When old Lothar one day is taken away— the subversive act of discussion and debate remains as a seed in the young narrators mind. Powerful in its brevity

Vance’s drily, ironic tale. “Dodkin’s Job” relates a tale of the uncaring welfare state as it issues seemingly harmless edicts that make little or no sense.

Luke Groyach, a day laborer frustrated with bureaucratic waste finds that working within the system can lead to success, if one gets to the “root” of the system. Where do decisions in the jungle of the bureaucrats state originate?

It is too easy to forget that petty conformist attitudes ooze their way into everyday life all too easily. “Dodkin’s Job” is a bitter reminder of the blandness and insidiousness of all conformism. A tinge of ambiguity runs through the tale, especially in the motives of the protagonist, making it all the more real.