Double or Nothing

By: Jack Sharkey

Narrated by: C. James Moore

First appearing in the May, 1962 magazine Fantastic Stories of Imagination, Double or Nothing, by Jack Sharkey, is a tongue-firmly-in-cheek science fiction short story chronicling a few hilarious, tragic-but-still-funny, days in the lives of wacky inventor Artie Lindstrom and Burt, his long-suffering engineer/fabricator partner and the tale's narrator.

It is summer, in the probably distant future, and Artie Lindstrom - the wizard behind a remotely-triggered jar lid opener that became the weapon that defeated the Martian invasion, a water desalinization machine that inadvertently produced gin, and a death ray gun that obliterated Venus during the Three-Day War - has sketched out plans for an anti-gravity machine not much bigger than a mini-fridge. Burt, not all that convinced that Artie's invention is such a great idea, nonetheless builds the machine according to plan. Following Artie's and Burt's few tests and revisions, in a classic example of unintended consequences, nothing else ever goes according to plan again.

After listening to Double or Nothing, you'll never look at a humble bowl of cornflakes in quite the same way.

Public Domain (P)2017 C James Moore