User:DoctorWho42/The People Trap

"The People Trap" is a short story by American author Robert Sheckley. It was first published in the June 1968 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

Background
The story was inspired by a "treatment" for the television series ABC Stage 67. Sheckley was not involved with the script nor production of that episode.

Plot
Land Race contestant Steve Baxter traverses a crowd to the Starting Line. Past the exocrowd, the endocrowd proves difficult. The dense nuclear mob worse. The authorities turn on Muzak. Baxter joins fifty others on the Starting Line. The Chief Judge announces the rules. It begins in Jersey City's Glebe Park and ends at the Land Office in Times Square. The first ten receive a trip to their own one-acre of land which has a house and farm equipment. Baxter considers withdrawing, but his wealthy neighbor St. John cuts in. St. John asks Baxter to withdraw. He dismisses it. He has a one-room apartment in Larchment with his family and six other people. It is too much. The race starts. The population exploded. Food scarcity and disease are gone. The government parcels out land via races. They began in the 1890s for Oklahoma and the Cherokee Strip. Baxter continues to the Free Port of Hoboken. On a marijuana runner, he stows away but is caught. The captain grills him but reach an understanding as both have/had a wife and children. A destroyer meets them. They are saved by trashlands smog. They dock at the 79th Street Pier. Baxter goes down West End Avenue. Black-hatted men stop him. Pay a toll or they gun him down. Baxter finds his wallet gone. A tall redhead Flame Steinmetz rescues him. They camp out at 69th Street and West End Avenue. They hold hands. Flame asks Baxter to live with her in the New York Central switchyard. Baxter refuses. Flame is furious, but desists when he leaves. Confused by a maze of signs, Baxter enters Central Park. The denizens mistake him as a Health Inspector. They disperse during a blackout. He is lost. An old social worker in what was the Lincoln Center nurses him back to health. Baxter continues the race. He enters an express walkway but it's one-way in the wrong direction. He vaults over a barrier but police stop Baxter. He hides in a candy store. He sees Flame and the bandits attack the police. Flame and Baxter make love in an abandoned Howard Johnson's restaurant. Baxter traverses the sewers. Baxter surfaces at 42nd Street to see a long wall. Flame gives him climbing equipment. They scale the wall together but Flame stumbles to her death. Baxter meets the Federal Land Clerk. Weeks later, Baxter's family relocates to the Sierra Nevadas.

Reception
In 1968, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction editor Edward L. Ferman said "The People Trap" was "quite different in approach from the TV play; it is all Sheckley, and, as you will quickly determine, it is not entirely serious."