Wenzell Brown 13 min read

If only Maudie had staked him the ten thousand for the Martian Development Company, there'd have been no reason to kill her, but she never would part with a fraction of her fortune.

Wenzell Brown's 1960 story spins a sharp social-SF crime tale from greed, speculation, and murder across the interplanetary frontier. Sharp, ironic golden-age SF. Read it for a cold-blooded story of a schemer, a fortune he can't get at, and the chain of consequence that follows.

In its time

Published in 1960, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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