The Plagiarist From Rigel IV: A Shortcut Too Good To Refuse

Fred has finally caught a break. A five-dollar typewriter from a pawn shop seems like the answer to months of stalled drafts and empty pages—until the machine starts producing work that isn’t his. At first, it’s clever. Then it’s impressive. And then it becomes dangerous, because the words are flawless, famous, and impossible to pass off as coincidence.

What begins as an argument between a frustrated writer and a stubborn machine escalates into a battle over credit, control, and temptation. Every attempt to reclaim authorship only tightens the trap. Success arrives quickly, editors are thrilled, and the checks keep coming—but the source of the brilliance refuses to remain a secret forever. Each page forces a decision: stop now and return to obscurity, or keep typing and accept the cost of borrowed genius.

Evan Hunter delivers a sharp, fast-moving science fiction satire that turns literary ambition into a cosmic bargaining chip. The story balances humor with unease, letting the jokes land even as the stakes rise. The question is never whether the machine can write—but how long a writer can live with knowing it writes better than he does.

Hunter was already an established professional storyteller when this tale appeared, publishing widely across magazines and paperback originals before later becoming a major force in American crime fiction. Writing under multiple names during his career, Hunter produced short stories and novels that blended dialogue-driven pacing with sharp observational humor. “The Plagiarist From Rigel IV” reflects his early science-fiction period, when he used speculative ideas to skewer creative ego, commercial success, and the uneasy relationship between talent and opportunity.