Stephen Marlowe 24 min read

A rich big-game hunter savors his antique recoil rifle in the steaming Venusian jungle, the only such relic on the planet, and all the more sporting for it.

Stephen Marlowe's 1959 story sets a wealthy couple's safari on a frontier Venus, the husband's old-fashioned weapon and casual privilege sketching a world of money and menace. Sharp, atmospheric first-contact SF with a satirical bite. Read it for evocative golden-age SF where the real quarry may not be what the hunters expect.

In its time

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

Reading it

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