William Carroll 15 min read

'Comrades,' the Soviet technician marvels, watching a square 'meteor' approach their spy satellite, an ancient American automobile, flying toward their wondrous machine. Then the picture goes dead.

William Carroll's 1957 story is a wry hard-SF and social-SF Cold War comedy of orbital one-upmanship. Clever, funny golden-age SF. Read it for a genial satire where a junked American car mysteriously reaches orbit and rattles the Russians, in a lighthearted jab at the space race.

In its time

Published in 1957, 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

John Schoenherr