Charles L. Fontenay 13 min read

Lauria sweeps down the staircase in her evening dress and straps a pistol to her hip, beneath the Constitution of Pamplin: no government, a man's home his castle, only the brave deserve the fair.

Charles L. Fontenay's 1957 story is a wry first-contact and social-SF tale of a frontier world's peculiar code. Clever, genial golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a colony's fierce libertarian creed shapes a most unusual courtship ritual, and the last brave invader of the title finds the rules of Pamplin a serious business.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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