"The First Case of Murder on Record Here in Thirty Generations. Incredible!"

"Make a Prison."

By Lawrence Block (born 1938; Wikipedia HERE; the ISFDb HERE; the IMDb HERE; and his Homepage HERE).

First appearance: The Original Science Fiction Stories, January 1959.

Reprints page (ISFDb HERE).

Among the reprints:

  The 5th Annual of the Year’s Best S-F, 1969.

  The Great SF Stories #21 (1959), 1990.

  One Night Stands, 1999, as "Nor Iron Bars a Cage".

Short short short story (4 pages).

Online at SFFAudio (HERE).

   "The Altheans had never seen a being like this one before, but they knew he was dangerous. So every precaution had to be taken to make his prison escape-proof."

A REAL desperado, this one, more than worthy of his punishment—but there's a catch . . .

Main characters:

~ First Althean ("I don't mean to sound boastful, but we've figured out all the angles"), Second Althean ("I'm glad he can't escape"), and The Prisoner ("walked to the edge of the tower and leaned over the railing, gazing down at them").

Reference:

- The inspiration for the title seems to come from Richard Lovelace's 1642 poem, "To Althea, From Prison" (see HERE):

    Stone walls doe not a prison make,

          Nor iron bars a cage

Resources:

- Hollywood must love movies with an escape theme since they've put a lot of money into a lot of them (and made a lot of money out of a lot of them). A few examples: (WARNING! SPOILERS!) (HERE), (HERE), (HERE), (HERE), (HERE), (HERE), (HERE), (HERE)—and so 

forth . . .

- Lawrence Block is better known as a crime fiction writer, and "Make a Prison" (a.k.a. "Nor Iron Bars a Cage") is the only SFF-nal story by him that we can find at the moment.

The bottom line:

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

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