Henry Slesar 10 min read

In a ragged barracks where combs and razors are luxuries, a soldier declares that tonight is the night.

Henry Slesar's 1957 story opens on the lean, stubbled Bolgar and the sneering Sergeant Pulley amid the scarcity of a run-down military future, one man steeling himself for a decisive move. Sharp, atmospheric magazine SF from a writer with a gift for compressed drama. Read it for tense, evocative golden-age SF that sketches a whole decayed world in a single barrack-room.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

10 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

Leo Summers