A. H. Phelps 21 min read

The phone rings, and Rod Workham picks it up with a sour reflex, thirty more resignations on the last mail flight, and a general raving that soon there won't be a man left on Venus.

A. H. Phelps's 1954 story is a wry colonization and social-SF tale of a failing project. Clever, pointed golden-age SF. Read it for a story where humanity's vital Venus colony is quietly hemorrhaging its people, and the harried man tasked with keeping them there must discover why the merchants of Venus keep quitting.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Kelly Freas