Frank Banta 7 min read

It is infinitely more satisfactory to purchase wives young, twelve is a good age, and Lisa, bought for a chrome control knob and a folded painting, is an illustrious argument for the system.

Frank Banta's 1961 story is a wry, unsettling first-contact and social-SF tale told by a chillingly urbane narrator. Clever, dark golden-age SF. Read it for a story whose smoothly reasonable voice, bartering treasures for a child-bride aboard a strange vessel, slowly reveals the alien horror of the world it takes for granted.

In its time

Published in 1961, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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