Dwight V. Swain 1 hr 45 min read

A flimsy carrier craft crashes onto the dust-choked Venusian waste, spilling its fugitive into a lethal wilderness, hunted, in a future where even eternity is for sale, but not to him.

Dwight V. Swain's 1957 story is a rousing dystopian and social-SF adventure. Vivid, driven golden-age SF. Read it for a fast-moving yarn of a hunted man on a hostile Venus, in a future where immortality can be bought, but only by the privileged few, a well-turned golden-age piece of pursuit, survival, and a pointed idea about who gets to live forever.

In its time

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

Reading it

1 hr 45 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).