Winston K. Marks 20 min read

A dusting powder that really does give you that 'lovely, radiant, atomic look' the ads promise, plus a little something extra nobody bargained for.

Winston K. Marks's 1954 story spins comedy from the advertising game, where a low-budget campaign for Atummyc Afterbath Dusting Powder becomes a runaway hit, because the product does exactly, and then far too much of, what it claims. Sharp, funny hard SF satire. Read it for a wry golden-age tale where the miracle product is a bit too miraculous.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Kelly Freas