A Zloor For Your Trouble by Mack Reynolds Episode #33
Mack Reynolds | September 6, 2022-
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A Zloor For Your Trouble by Mack Reynolds Episode #33
Mack Reynolds
A ZLOOR FOR YOUR TROUBLE
Episode #33 · Written by Mack Reynolds · Narrated by Scott Miller
Napoleon Prescott accepts a job that sounds simple and pays suspiciously well: bring back a small Martian animal alive. The moment he reaches Mars, he discovers he isn’t the first hunter to take the offer—and none of the others have gone home victorious. The creature isn’t fast, hostile, or rare, yet every traditional method fails, and every failed attempt tightens the trap around the men who made the wager.
As frustration mounts, the story shifts from a hunting problem to a test of perception and restraint. Mack Reynolds turns the situation into a pressure cooker where strength, firepower, and professional reputation mean nothing. The real danger lies in stubborn thinking and the quiet realization that the rules of Earth no longer apply.
Wry humor runs beneath the tension, but the stakes never feel small. This is a story about learning when force becomes foolish, when pride becomes expensive, and how easily smart people can be outmaneuvered by something that simply refuses to play along.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mack Reynolds published extensively across Astounding Science Fiction, Galaxy, and If, building a reputation for stories that examined systems—economic, political, and cultural—through sharp dialogue and practical conflicts. He wrote over forty novels and hundreds of short stories, including works like “Ultima Thule,” “Compounded Interest,” and the Joe Mauser series.
“A Zloor for Your Trouble!” reflects Reynolds’s talent for blending humor with hard limits, using a seemingly light assignment to expose deeper pressures of exploitation, pride, and control. Rather than leaning on spectacle, Reynolds lets the problem sit, tighten, and force its own solution—making the payoff both surprising and earned.
LISTEN TO THE STORY
Listen to A Zloor For Your Trouble by Mack Reynolds — A risky Martian job turns strange in this vintage science fiction tale where force fails and patience decides the outcome.
RELATED STORIES
Mars has always been the most familiar of alien worlds, close enough to imagine and distant enough to remain dangerous. Vintage science fiction turned the red planet into a testing ground for human ambition—an empty frontier, a dying world, or a civilization older and stranger than Earth itself.
These stories send explorers, settlers, soldiers, and scientists across the void to a place where survival is never guaranteed. Thin air, vast deserts, and abandoned cities create a landscape that is both harsh and haunting.
Whether the planet is home to ancient Martians, fragile colonies, or the last hope after Earth’s decline, Mars stories are about adaptation.
- Dwellers in Silence by Ray Bradbury
- Death-Wish by Ray Bradbury
- Defense Mech by Ray Bradbury
- The Visitor by Ray Bradbury
- The One Who Waits by Ray Bradbury
- Survey Team by Philip K. Dick
- The Crystal Egg by H. G. Wells
- Never on Mars by John Wyndham
- Return of a Legend by Raymond Z. Gallun
- Message From Mars by Clifford D. Simak
- The Monsters Came By Night by Robert Silverberg
- The Martians and the Coys by Mack Reynolds
- A Zloor For Your Trouble by Mack Reynolds
- The Weapon by Isaac Asimov
- Arm of the Law by Harry Harrison
- Monster by William Morrison
- Fee of the Frontier by H. B. Fyfe
- A Message From Our Sponsor by Henry Slesar
- Two Weeks in August by Frank M. Robinson
- Duel on Syrtis by Poul Anderson
- We're Off to Mars by Joe Gibson
- Death Walks on Mars by Alan J. Ramm
- The Old Timer by Richard R. Smith
- Trainee for Mars by Harry Harrison
- The Hermit of Mars by Stephen Bartholomew
- Martian Homecoming by Frank Belknap Long
- Lake of Fire by Frank Belknap Long
- The Hated by Frederik Pohl
- The Old Martians by Rog Phillips
- The Martian Shore by Charles L. Fontenay
- Madmen of Mars by Erik Fennel
- Martians Never Die by Lucius Daniel
- What's He Doing in There? by Fritz Leiber
- Don't Look Now by Henry Kuttner
- Jonah of the Jove-Run by Ray Bradbury
- The Goggles of Dr Dragonet by Fritz Leiber
- The Foxholes of Mars by Fritz Leiber
- Alien Equivalent by Richard R. Smith
- The Beast of Boredom by Richard R. Smith
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