Charles L. Fontenay 22 min read

A man keeps buying suspiciously cheap electronics, a TV with no power cord, then one with a dead picture tube, and his roommate keeps laughing.

Charles Fontenay's 1959 story mines comedy from Jack Hanshaw's addiction to too-good-to-be-true bargains, building toward the unsettling question of just where these impossible discounts come from. Light, funny social SF with a needling twist. Read it for a genial golden-age comedy about consumer temptation and the true cost of a deal.

In its time

Published in 1959, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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