User:DoctorWho42/Budget Planet

"Budget Planet" is a short story by American author Robert Sheckley. It was first published in the March 1968 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

Plot
Maudsley looks at the world. Brookside thinks it is a good first project. Maudsley is amazed. Maudsley asked them to build a world. He asks if they are engineers. Neither reply. Maudsley quotes the brochure. Brookside responds they had a request for a planet. It was fulfilled. Maudsley asks about the type 05 sun. This is a budget world. He doesn't think they kept costs down. They have to make a profit. The biggest cost is the heating. Brookside explains requirements made it difficult. Maudsley orders the sun down. A workman places it in storage. They use a G13 type star. Orin notes it won't be hot enough. Maudsley wants the planet closer. Brookside informs the star's PR rays won't have room to dissipate. It might kill the inhabitants. They will have to wear heavy lead suits. The inhabitants only weigh 8 pounds. Maudsley does not care. They could afford the Solar Screen. Orin doesn't think they can afford it. Maudsley says PR radiation isn't instantly fatal. They could live up to 9.3 years. Maudsley wants the mountains pared down. Brookside writes in a notebook. Maudsley looks at the apple-oaks. He tells them to drain their elan vital. Maudsley asks about the cows. This is an unfurnished world. He wants them in the protoplasm vat. Maudsley asks about Carmody. Carmody defends himself. Maudsley orders the workmen to remove him. Neither Orin nor Brookside recognise him. Maudsley tells them to bring him back. Carmody tells Maudsley he's trying to find Earth. Maudsley built Earth. He invented science then. Maudsley begins the story on Earth. An old man orders a planet. It took six days. The owner complains about biomes, tornadoes and water. Maudsley defends them explaining form follows function because of science and definite rules. The old man knows only ethics and morals. This confuses him. He asks how to reconcile the fatality of science with free will. Maudsley bluffs they're not incompatible. The old man thinks this is contradictory. Maudsley responds contradiction is fundamental to the universe. Otherwise, everything reaches entropy. Maudlsey claims a tendency pushed to its limit becomes its opposite. This intrigues the old man. He was going to teach them how to live. He decides they'll explore science instead. Maudsley sums things up with science is full of rules. Rules help you. They give reasons for what you do. Just apply the rules after you do them.

Reception
In 1969, Publishers' Weekly's Barbara A. Bannon noted it as "an interesting and satirical account of "Genesis" told from a con man's point of view." Analog Science Fiction / Science Fact's P. Schuyler Miller called it "a wonderful wandering jape." In 1970, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction's Joanna Russ appraised "Budget Planet" "out of its proper context, and that I have been told it is not only funny but subtle in Mr. Sheckley's novel, from which it has been untimely ripped."