Creature from Cleveland Depths

The cold war has gone nuclear, and the survivors have gone underground. But not everyone. A writer and his wife have stayed on the surface, watching the mole people emerge every few years to trade and consult. The underground dwellers have everything they need except one thing: imagination. Their perfectly regulated society has bred creativity out of existence. So they come to the surface, hat in hand, looking for writers and artists to dream up new products, new diversions, new reasons to keep living in the dark. The latest creation is called The Tickler, and it's supposed to be harmless entertainment. But our narrator notices something wrong. The Tickler does something to people. Something irreversible. And no one else seems to care. As he and his wife dig deeper, they discover that the price of survival might be something more terrifying than extinction. Written in 1962, this is cold war paranoia as dark prophecy, a story about what we sacrifice when we choose safety over freedom, and whether the humans who emerge from bunkers are still human at all.