George O. Smith 48 min read

Much has been written about mankind starving amid plenty, but never before has a civilization faced luxury amid bankruptcy, as executive Keg Johnson of Interplanet Transport is about to discover.

George O. Smith's 1945 story, part of his Venus Equilateral series, is a clever hard-SF and social-SF tale of matter-duplication and economic collapse. Sharp, ingenious golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a machine that can copy anything threatens to unmake the very idea of value.

In its time

Published in 1945, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Paul Orban