John Firth is a dazzling industrialist who dreams of a world beyond taxes, social obligations, and the "lazy" masses he despises. When a mysterious Stranger offers him a hidden planetoid past Pluto, Firth seizes the chance to build a private utopia for the brilliant, wealthy, and ambitious—a seductive paradise where no one answers to government, charity, or unwanted responsibility. But the perfect world is born in secrecy and murder, and over the course of a year Firth and the Stranger turn the barren body into a functioning civilization with power systems, hydroponics, laboratories, and leisure spaces. Firth gathers nearly three hundred elite colonists, convinced they will preserve civilization by escaping its burdens. Instead, their self-made haven exposes its fatal flaw: they will not do the work required to sustain it. As labor becomes necessary, the dream curdles into exploitation, hypocrisy, and kidnapping, revealing a sharp science-fiction satire about privilege, power, idealism, and the high price of building a "perfect" society. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.
