Back in print after an absence of nearly 70 years, the facsimile edition of E. C. Large’s novel Sugar in the Air is what we now call a mash-up, made up of scientific research, social satire, and fictional flights of fancy. Sugar in the Air (1937) is a scientific romance in which the idea of extracting sugar from the air is held, for the duration of the book, in suspended disbelief by characters desperate for work in a period of economic recession. A description of the product development and manufacturing process doubles as a critique of capitalism’s stewardship of technological progress that suggests alternative production models for today’s designers.