Nice Girl with 5 Husbands

In Short

First published in 1951, Nice Girl with 5 Husbands follows Tom Dorset, a mid-century artist stranded at a dull Southwest fellowship, who wanders into a dust devil near a balancing rock and inadvertently steps a century into the future. He finds a cooperative, high-tech society living in harmony with nature and practicing communal group marriage. As he tries to make sense of their casually advanced lives, he finds himself deeply drawn to their way of living before the erratic time winds yank him back. It endures as a warm, lighthearted critique of contemporary social stiffness.

The Story

Frustrated by his creative block and the petty jealousies at the Tosker-Brown Vacation Fellowship in the American Southwest, artist Tom Dorset takes a walk into a valley of red stones. Unbeknownst to him, a regional "time wind" regularly blows across a balancing rock, shifting travelers a century into the future every morning at ten o'clock and back a century into the past at two o'clock. Walking into a sudden dust storm, Tom steps unaware into the year 2050.

He immediately meets Lois, a pinkish-copper-haired young woman wearing a tunic and high-tech transparent footwear called "digitals." Lois casually discusses monogamy, group dynamics, and her dissatisfaction with her current mood cycle before offhandedly mentioning her five husbands and four co-wives. Bemused and assuming she belongs to a local fringe cult or a secret government atomic project, Tom agrees to meet her family group, the Wolvers.

At their sleek, solar-powered, serpentine adobe ranch house, Tom meets a vibrant, welcoming group of adults and high-IQ children. The group lives in an easygoing, communal structure where jobs like rocket piloting, uranium mining, and algae farming are balanced with art and philosophy. Their home features self-lighting cigarettes, advanced ultrasonics, biological mutations, and exquisite cooperative wood carvings. Despite his confusion, Tom is charmed by their effortless warmth and Lois’s invitation to stay with them.

However, as two o'clock approaches, Jock offers to fly Tom back over the valley in their helicopter to locate Tom's fellowship host house. As they land nearby to retrieve a Leica camera Tom dropped earlier, Tom is overcome by a sudden, subconscious panic. He sprints blindly into another swirling dust devil just as the clock strikes two. The time wind catches him, returning him to his own era. The future ranch house, the helicopter, and Lois vanish. Tom spends days fruitlessly searching the valley for the Wolvers, never realizing he was caught in a time shift. He returns to his normal life, permanently missing the subtle clues—like binary arithmetic and Einsteinian equations—that could have explained his extraordinary afternoon.

How It Unfolds

A stroll through the desert Tom Dorset hikes into a red-rock valley to escape his creative frustration and the dreary social atmosphere at his artist retreat. He walks directly into a localized time-tornado without realizing it has shifted the landscape around him.

An unusual encounter He meets Lois Wolver, an extraordinarily natural young woman who wears magnetic footwear and casually debates the merits of monogamy. As they walk together, she nonchalantly mentions that she shares her life with five husbands and four co-wives.

Inside the future household Lois brings Tom to her family's solar-powered ranch house, where he is welcomed by an array of communal spouses and exceptionally smart, barefoot children. He experiences their advanced technology, from ultrasonic tools to bio-engineered pets, while trying to rationalize them as a secret colony of eccentrics.

An offer and a departure Lois invites Tom to join their group and escape his historical burden of sadness, an offer he finds surprisingly enticing. They board a helicopter to survey the valley and retrieve Tom's lost camera before the afternoon hour.

The return wind At two o'clock, panic seizes Tom as he runs across the sand, stepping straight into another dust storm that reverses the shift. He finds himself alone in his own time with his dropped camera, searching endlessly for a home that will not exist for another hundred years.

The People

• Tom Dorset: A mid-twentieth-century artist burdened by creative inertia, social anxiety, and a cynical view of romance. He wants genuine connection but struggles to understand the utopian world he briefly stumbles into, ultimately fleeing out of instinctual panic.
• Lois Wolver: A vibrant, copper-haired woman of the year 2050 who speaks with complete naturalness and unselfconscious warmth. She questions the necessity of traditional monogamy while simultaneously craving deep personal affection, ultimately offering Tom a place in her family.
• Jock: A quiet, pharaoh-like figure who acts as a gentle analyst and leader within the Wolver group, balancing mood charts and operating advanced future transport like the scarab-blue helicopter.
• Larry: A jovially bearded rocket pilot who acts as one of Tom's main hosts, proudly explaining the group's solar cells, child-rearing duties, and communal lifestyle with zero defensiveness.

In Its Own Voice

"Every morning at ten o'clock, it blows a hundred years into the future; every afternoon at two, it blows a hundred years into the past."

The narrator introduces the natural, localized temporal anomaly operating near the balancing rock in the desert valley.

"To find five more difficult men would be positively Martian."

Lois exasperatedly describes the eccentric personalities of her five husbands to a bewildered Tom.

"You're strange," Lois told him. "There's a weight of sadness in you. As if you lived in a less happy age. As if it weren't 2050."

Lois accurately senses the historical burdens and social anxieties that separate Tom from the easygoing utopian culture of her era.

What It's Really About

Underneath its playful time-travel premise, the story explores the social and emotional constraints of mid-century American life. Leiber contrasts the claustrophobic, anxious nature of 1950s monogamy and careerist art with an open, cooperative vision of human relationships. The narrative questions whether romantic jealousy and social rigidity are innate human traits or merely products of an unhappy era. Through Tom's inability to recognize where he is, the story illustrates how cultural biases can blind people to radically better ways of living, making true freedom feel terrifying rather than welcoming.

Why Read It Today

Nice Girl with 5 Husbands offers a charming, lighthearted slice of mid-century speculative fiction that prioritizes social speculation over hard technology. Readers who enjoy gentle mid-century satire, sunny desert settings, and cozy utopian visions will appreciate Leiber’s relaxed, wry prose. The narrative moves at a brisk, breezy pace without getting bogged down in technical explanations.

The story does reflect the cheerful period eccentricities of 1950s magazine science fiction, particularly in its breezy hand-waving of complex time-travel mechanics and its idyllic, almost naive portrayal of a future communal family structure. Its central conflict rests on an ironic misunderstanding that the protagonist never truly solves, leaving the reader with a pleasant, poignant sense of missed opportunity. It stands out as a brief, thoughtful exploration of how a happier, less possessive future might look to a thoroughly confused visitor from the past.