Review of Allen Lang, “Fuel Me Once”, Analog Science Fiction and Fact July/August (2020): 116–117 (Kindle) – Purchase Here. Reviewed by John Atom.
Contains spoilers.
Two businessmen meet at a bar and strike a deal to start a daring collaboration. They’ll build a fleet of heavy cruisers to extract oil from Saturn’s moon Titan.
Lang’s story has some nice and snappy dialogue that helps the reader get in the headspace of the two main characters. It’s reminiscent of the 40s gangster and noir movies, an appropriate style for this story. Unfortunately, the story’s premise lacks plausibility. It’s extremely unlikely that the characters would be able to efficiently extract hydrocarbon fuels from Titan and bring them to earth with conventional (hydrocarbon-based) methods of transportation.
If you can get past the plausibility issues, “Fuel Me Once” is a fun story to read.
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