Scan barcode
tome15's review
3.0
Popular fiction genres go through primitive, classic, and revisiionist phases. The primitive phase establishes the iconography and basic plots for the classic stories that come later. This novella from the 1930s is a first phase story. Space pirates, primitive natives, and a beleaguered crew duke it out on a tropical Venus. It combines some rather formal prose with the gangster slang of the era. It is clearly influenced by O Henry, and it paves the way for Heinlein stories like Between Planets and Logic of Empire. Thanks to Startup Publishing for digging it up.
More...