Reginald Bretnor 33 min read

On a clear spring evening in 2189, Charles Edward Button comes home half an hour late for supper, tosses his hat to the robot butler, and announces that he has just bought a planet.

Reginald Bretnor's 1952 story is a witty first-contact and social-SF comedy of an impulsive purchase. Clever, funny golden-age SF. Read it for a genial domestic farce where a man's bargain planet, complete with real oceans and two moons, turns out to come with complications his exasperated household never bargained for.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

William Ashman