SF Stories I’m Reading: TED KOSMATKA “The Art of Alchemy.”

TED KOSMATKA “The Art of Alchemy.” First appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 2008. Reprinted in The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Three, edited by Jonathan Strahan (Night Shade Books, 2009) and The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2009 Edition, edited by Rich Horton (Prime Books, 2010). There is a recurring th4eme to a certain number of similar stories, perhaps not as many as there used to be, in which an inventor of an improved means of propelling automobiles goes to a gigantic company which produces and sells gasoline worldwide, and he ends up in all kinds of trouble. You man consider this as one of them, although the invention is rather a material stranger than steel, which someone brings a thread of to research scientists at a steel company. Which is all I tell you, as what’s the fun in that, just in case you run across a copy of the story which you can read for yourself. It is of course embellished with several other major factors, and in fact…