George O. Smith 40 min read

On terraformed Pluto, a 'man-made planet' of mined uranium and imported air, the cities bear the names of hell, and trouble brews across the Devil's Range.

George O. Smith's 1944 story imagines Pluto made habitable for its uranium, its map dotted with Styx and Mephisto, as a colonial problem unfolds. Inventive, engineering-minded golden-age SF with a strong sense of place. Read it for clever hard SF about remaking the solar system's most distant world.

In its time

Published in 1944, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

40 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

A. Williams