Dick Purcell 13 min read

'I'm getting old, and old men die,' Sam Chipfellow tells his lawyer, an eccentric millionaire in a fully automatic mansion, ringed by relatives who wonder only when his money will be theirs.

Dick Purcell's 1956 story spins a wry social-SF and space-opera tale from a rich man's plan for his fortune and his grasping heirs. Clever, ironic golden-age SF. Read it for a genial story about a shrewd old man determined to have the last laugh on the vultures circling his estate.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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