Gun For Hire: Hired Hands, Cold Hearts, and Hot Lead

Joe Prantera was good at his work. Quiet, careful, and steady under pressure, he made a living doing the kind of jobs most people never spoke about out loud. Then something impossible happens. Instead of finishing a routine hit in 1960 Los Angeles, Joe wakes up in a city that calls itself Nuevo Los Angeles... in the year 2133.

The world he finds makes no sense. Cars float instead of rolling. Money no longer exists. Nations have mostly disappeared. There are no prisons, no police, and—most unbelievable of all—no professional criminals. Violence has been treated like a disease and removed from everyday life. Humanity has built a peaceful civilization so stable that many people struggle to even imagine crime.

But that peace is suddenly in danger.

A new political agitator is gathering followers among restless young citizens. His message romanticizes power, conflict, and conquest—ideas long buried in the past. The scholars who study history recognize the pattern immediately. They fear that if this movement spreads, the calm society they built could unravel.

There is just one problem. No one alive knows how to kill.

So they reach into the past and bring forward the one thing their world no longer produces: a professional assassin. Joe Prantera.

For Joe, the future is strange, soft, and full of people who have never faced the kind of decisions he understands perfectly. The doctors who summoned him believe they need a hired gun to eliminate a dangerous man before his movement grows. Joe sees something else: an opportunity.

Mack Reynolds built a long and prolific career in science fiction magazines during the 1950s and 1960s. His stories appeared regularly in publications such as Galaxy Science Fiction, Amazing Stories, If: Worlds of Science Fiction, and Astounding Science Fiction.