Robert Moore Williams 24 min read

The orders are to build up Venus as the gateway to paradise, fog-flies, flying snakes, and 'tame' Venusians included, as a brash publicity man dares a knife-carrying native to start carving.

Robert Moore Williams's 1953 story is a wry colonization and social-SF tale of hype, spin, and a hostile frontier. Fun, sharp golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a shameless promoter's campaign to sell a deadly Venus collides with the ugly reality behind the brochures.

In its time

Published in 1953, 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

Robert Fuqua