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Scanners Live in Vain by Cordwainer Smith
4.0

Good short story, but one that you have to work at to understand. Set in 6000AD when interstellar travel leads to the death wish and therefore needs Habermans, like convicts, and the supervisory Scanners to fly the ships while the humans are kept in ‘cold sleep’. And so the complicated story begins with Martel the scanner, who is different from the others because he is married to a normal woman, decides to ‘cranch’. Worth the read, but one that requires concentration.