[Gutenberg 58673] • It Takes a Thief

“Big Joe and the Nth Generation” (variant title: “It Takes a Thief”) (1952): A beautiful story that begins with real promise but devolves into the standard quest to save the world idiom. Asir, a thief from Mar’s highlands, is caught redhanded. But, what he has stolen reveals the reason why Mars is losing its atmosphere. Miller hints at an unusual society where thieves steal ideas and quotations instead of cash: “A thief, if successful, frequently became endowed with wisdom, for he memorized more wealth than a score of honest men. Quotations from the ancient gods — Fermi, Einstein, Elgermann, Hanser and the rest — most men owned scattered phrases, and scattered phrases remained meaningless. But a thief memorized all transactions he overhead, and the countless phrases could be fitted together into meaningful ideas”.