Robert Sheckley 41 min read

Lost in the vast Scorpion Desert of Venus, Morrison fights sleep on his twenty-first day at the wheel of his sandcar, needing all the courage a man can own, and every credit he can raise.

Robert Sheckley's 1959 story is a taut, gripping colonization and adventure tale of a desperate desert prospector. Sharp, suspenseful golden-age SF from a master. Read it for a rousing survival story where a man hunting his fortune in the Venusian sands races empty credit accounts and death itself.

In its time

Published in 1959, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Diane Dillon