Isaac Asimov’s It’s Such a Beautiful Day was originally published in 1955 in Star Science Fiction Stories no. 3. The story takes place in the year 2117 in District A-3, outside of San Francisco, and focuses on the turmoil a failed teleportation device causes to the lives of young Richard Hanshaw and his mother. The failure of their Door forces Richard to leave the sanitized indoor environment and walk through nature. When he begins to enjoy being outside, his teacher and his mother think he has a psychological disorder.

Asimov’s story concerns our over-reliance on technology in the early space/atomic age, warning that this would cause us to lose touch with our place in the environment and with simple pleasures, such as wandering outdoors without a clear purpose. Written in 1955, some of the dialogue, particularly that of Richard Hanshaw, is dated and reminiscent of Leave It to Beaver and the story portrays the West as inherently more advanced as other cultures, particularly those of Africa, a bias that most modern sci-fi works to avoid or actively subvert. That said, fans of Asimov will find all the thought-provoking prose they expect of his work and this Creative Education edition presents the story on its own rather than in an anthology as the series editors believe it deserves to be appreciated in its own context. ( )