The Red Hot Deal: Black Magic, Atomic Gold, and One Bad Deal

Lando and Avaros are two of the galaxy’s most experienced confidence men. Their newest target is George Melnick, an aging scientist who has abandoned conventional research for alchemy and Black Magic. Melnick believes he can summon a devil, trade away a soul, and receive the secret of eternal youth.

That suits the aliens perfectly. With his glowing skull, horns, crimson legs, and barbed tail, Lando already looks exactly like the creature Melnick expects. Avaros supplies an illegal rejuvenating drug, while Melnick offers a scientific formula that supposedly converts lead into gold. Everyone enters the bargain convinced that someone else is the fool.

The Red Hot Deal is a fast-moving science fiction comedy packed with crooked negotiations and sharp reversals. Joseph Farrell turns an ancient bargain with the devil into an interplanetary confidence game. The aliens may possess advanced machines, alien medicine, and years of criminal experience, but their human victim has ambitions of his own.

Joseph Farrell published sixteen stories in science fiction magazines between 1943 and 1959. His fiction included “Fountain of Death,” published in Future Science Fiction Stories in March 1952, and “Mind Stealers of Pluto.” “The Red Hot Deal” appeared in the September 1959 issue of Fantastic Universe and appears to have been his final magazine story. Farrell closes his publishing career with a comic collision between alien criminals, atomic physics, and one remarkably troublesome alchemist.