Charles E. Fritch 15 min read

'People are basically alike,' Harding says, lounging in a native hut and biting into an orange-like fruit, 'they're all suckers.' But Sheckly reminds him these aren't people. They're lizards.

Charles E. Fritch's 1953 story is a wry social-SF space opera of a con game on an alien world. Clever, ironic golden-age SF. Read it for a sharp little tale where two Earthmen set out to fleece the credulous natives, with a neat twist on who, exactly, is the sucker.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Kelly Freas