Jack McKenty 11 min read

Mars is a gaudy tourist trap of casinos and fireworks, until the Observatory notices something in the photographs.

McKenty's 1954 satire imagines the red planet as a neon Las Vegas, where the Chamber of Commerce throws a 'Marsy Gras' of floats and gambling and the astronomers next door file stiff notes of protest. Then fresh evidence turns up in the telescope plates, and the joke sharpens. A wry send-up of boosterism and commercialized frontier, with the pulp era's gift for wringing real ideas out of broad comedy. Read it for tongue-in-cheek colonial SF that lands a genuine sting under the glitz.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

11 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

Charles Beck