Richard Rein Smith 24 min read

Joe slides five ten-dollar bills across the table to a wide-eyed brunette and tells her he wants a job done, a small, quick job, whose true nature he'll explain later.

Richard Rein Smith's 1958 story spins a clever dystopian social-SF tale from a future where crime works by very different rules. Sharp, ironic golden-age SF. Read it for a story that opens on a shady deal and reveals a society where you have to pick your crime with peculiar care.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Dick Francis