Robert Sheckley 19 min read

The Sexual Morality Act is tough enough to buck, but the Algolian sex-surrogate a smuggler's carrying is tougher.

Robert Sheckley's 1958 comedy catches Ralph Garvey's private yacht at Boston Spaceport just as an unheard-of customs inspection threatens to expose his very illicit alien cargo. Fast, funny, and satirical, it's Sheckley doing what he did best: needling human hang-ups through the absurdities of interstellar contraband. Read it for sly, sexy golden-age comedy from one of SF's sharpest humorists.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller