The winner and new...
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Release date is 2026-02-28
Tom Trussel (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Luminist Archive) Tom Trussel (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Luminist Archive)
The winner and new... by Ib Melchior is a science fiction short story written in the mid-20th century. It satirizes mass media, consumerism, and politics through a high-stakes television quiz show where knowledge becomes spectacle and the ultimate prize is national power.
A flamboyant emcee hosts a colossal live quiz in a stadium and before a vast TV audience, complete with glamorous ads and a computer that selects questions. The long-reigning champion, a timid philatelist named Monroe, faces a confident challenger, James Burton, who chooses Mars as his category. Sealed in force-fields to prevent any outside help, they trade increasingly difficult questions—ranging from Martian geography and biology to obscure stamp lore—while the tension mounts. After hours, Monroe finally misses a deceptively simple stamp question, his force-field implodes, and he vanishes; the emcee then proclaims Burton “the Winner and New President of the United States,” revealing the show’s chilling premise and the story’s sharp critique of entertainment-driven governance. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Science fiction Short stories Television game shows -- Fiction