Solomon's Orbit

The Cold War is escalating, Sputnik has launched, and somewhere in a California junkyard, a man named Solomon is about to become the most dangerous person on Earth without meaning to. He's just figured out how to launch old cars into orbit using salvaged Buick engines, vacuum hoses, and sheer stubbornness. The cars begin disappearing into the sky one by one, and suddenly both the Pentagon and the Kremlin are scrambling to understand this bizarre new satellite program. No one suspects the unassuming junkyard owner who just wanted to see if it could be done. When Solomon is whisked away to Washington to explain his methods to terrified military officials, he remains blissfully unaware that he's started an international incident. This is a wry, gentle satire that captures a particular slice of 1960s anxiety: the fear that anything, even a hobbyist in a California junkyard, might be a Soviet spy. It's absurd, it's funny, and it understands exactly how bureaucracies turn innocent curiosity into paranoid catastrophe.