
Gunnison's Bonanza
An aging prospector named Gunnison has spent a lifetime chasing the ultimate strike, only to watch opportunity slip away at every turn. With his last hope pinned on the forbidden Ghanati region of Mars, he pays a steep fee to a shady pilot and loads his ship with food, water, and a sack of interplanetary coins. The story opens as he leaves the bustling port, his mind a mix of bitter resentment toward bureaucratic red tape and stubborn determination to prove his skill.
The Ghanati is a bleak, heavily guarded sector where the Interplanetary Charter permits only government‑sanctioned teams, and trespassers face death. As Gunnison’s craft descends toward the scarred Martian landscape, he confronts the weight of his past failures and the looming threat of execution for daring to trespass. Listeners are drawn into a tense, sci‑fi adventure that balances raw human greed with the harsh realities of colonial law on a once‑promising world.
Language
en
Duration
~22 minutes (21K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
Nov 16, 2021
Rights
Public domain in the USA.

A little-known mid-century science-fiction writer, Dick Purcell created sharp, imaginative stories about time, ambition, and humanity’s reach beyond Earth. His work offers a fascinating glimpse into the adventurous pulp-SF era of the 1950s.
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