The Corkscrew Of Space

This story was published in this magazine although, for once, a story by Poul Anderson is not announced on the cover. I said in the previous post that I would post again about "The Corkscrew of Space" but cannot find a lot to say.

We notice that the colonized Mars has a breathable atmosphere which it should not have in an sf story published in 1956, then there is an explanation. The story is an Andersonian dramatization of physics, economics, sociology and politics. The high cost of space travel causes economic austerity in the Martian colony. Some people make a virtue of a necessity. Thus, austerity generates puritanism and intolerant, prohibitionist politics. A technological revolution in space travel will solve all these problems.

Thus, the story makes the same point as Robert Heinlein's "We Also Walk Dogs" and one passage in Anderson's Tau Zero:

there is a technical problem;
there is a scientist with the ability to solve such a problem;
therefore, motivate him to solve it.

In this case, austere Mars serves only expensive, unpalatable, synthetic beer whereas a  French scientist researching on Mars and able to solve the warp space equations is a connoisseur of his native wines...