License to Steal

The year is 1959, and first contact has just made Earth's legal system obsolete. When Skrrgck, a distinguished citizen of Altair, arrives in Chicago seeking what he assumes is a simple bureaucratic formality, a license to steal, he encounters an alien concept: crime. On his home planet, theft is an honorable profession, the foundation of society. On Earth, it's called jail. What follows is a gleefully absurd journey through the loopholes of interstellar law. Skrrgck, operating on the belief that Earth customs permit what Altairi customs demand, helps himself to a major downtown building and its occupants. The legal chaos that ensues spans galaxies. Yet through some cosmic accident of semantics, he becomes a hero back home after stealing the Altairian Crown Jewels, and ascends to power as Premier. His final act? Outlawing theft entirely, turning the satirical knife one last time. Newman writes with the confident wit of a man who finds all legal systems equally ridiculous, and the result is a pitch-perfect comedy of manners where the Manners in question happen to be interplanetary.