Stephen Marlowe 37 min read

A distress call races through subspace ahead of the light, and a sleeping starship captain is about to have a very bad awakening.

Stephen Marlowe's 1956 story opens with an SOS crackling between the orbit of Mercury and the sun's corona, picked up light-years away, as a terrible weapon deals death aboard a stricken ship. Fast, colorful space opera with a psi-powers wrinkle and a strong sense of cosmic distance. Read it for propulsive golden-age adventure that opens with a bang and a mystery.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

37 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).