Collector's Item - Evelyn E. Smith

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Résumé :
Being trapped in the steaming h-l of Venus is no excuse for forgetting one's manners-but anyone abducted, marooned, tricked, kept from tea might well crack under the strain! A wonderful and amusing satire of the modern cosmetics industry. Evelyn E. Smith is best known as the author of the Miss Melville mysteries. From 1952 to 1969 she wrote dozens of science fiction and fantasy short stories that appeared in magazines such as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Galaxy, Super Science Fiction, and Fantastic Universe. Her stories were witty, well written, often humorous, and always unforgettable.

Biographie:
Evelyn E. Smith (1922-2000) was an American science fiction and fantasy writer whose work appeared widely in the 1950s and 1960s. Known for her intellectual clarity and understated satire, she frequently used speculative settings to explore cultural expectation, institutional authority, and human contradiction. Her stories remain notable for their intelligence, restraint, and social insight within mid-century American science fiction....

Sommaire:
A sharply ironic mid-century science fiction story in which rarity, ownership, and value take on unsettling new meaning. In Collector's Item, Evelyn E. Smith turns the familiar impulse to acquire and categorize into a speculative examination of power and perception. What begins as admiration for the unusual gradually reveals deeper tensions beneath the act of collecting itself. As the boundaries between observer and observed begin to shift, assumptions about worth, control, and identity come under quiet scrutiny. Characteristic of Smith's work, the story blends imaginative premise with social insight. Rather than relying on spectacle, she builds tension through cultural misunderstanding and subtle reversals, demonstrating how easily the language of appreciation can mask imbalance. Compact and incisive, Collector's Item exemplifies the intelligence and restraint that distinguish her contribution to Golden Age science fiction. Explore other exciting Positronic Books devoted to classic science fiction, fantasy, and mystery....