Vic Phillips Scott Roberts 45 min read

Chemist Brian Hanson works his assistant late over centrifuge tests and vitamin counts, grim and driven, his mind on something far bigger than the young man's dreams of a night off.

Vic Phillips and Scott Roberts's 1942 story builds a dystopian social-SF tale around corporate control of vital resources. Sharp, pointed golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a lab chemist's obsession leads toward the exposure of a world-spanning monopoly.

In its time

Published in 1942, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

William A. Kolliker