Playboy Fiction: The Crooked Man

In August 1955, Playboy published sci-fi writer and famed Twilight Zone scribe Charles Beaumont's The Crooked Man. Written in his twenties, Beaumont's short story followed a man named Jesse who was forced to hide his heterosexuality in an alternate universe where all inhabitants were gay and straight relationships were criminalized. By the time the story reached Playboy Editor in Chief Hugh Hefner, it had already been rejected by Esquire. One only has to consider the political climate at the time to understand why.