Stephen Marlowe 25 min read

Broke and behind on every payment, twenty-first-century salvage men who cling stubbornly to razors and .30-.30 rifles instead of blasters find their old-fashioned ways may be exactly what saves them.

Stephen Marlowe's 1956 story is a rousing space-opera adventure. Vivid, engaging golden-age SF. Read it for a colorful yarn of down-on-their-luck spacefarers whose fondness for archaic gear becomes an unexpected edge, in a fast-moving golden-age piece that pits old-fashioned grit against a high-tech future, with plenty of action and wit.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

W. E. Terry