Stephen Marlowe 25 min read

Not everyone sees the first Moon-flight as a glorious step toward the stars, there will always be fast-buck boys like Lubrano, out to turn even a lunar mission into a racket.

Stephen Marlowe's 1956 story spins a sharp hard-SF and space-opera tale from the crass side of the first Moon shot. Sharp, ironic golden-age SF. Read it for a story that meets humanity's leap to the Moon with a hard-eyed look at the hucksters who'd exploit it.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Emmanuel Stallman