Robert E. Gilbert 20 min read

A Light Brigade officer leads his hussars toward the guns, in a world where thinking a thing makes it so.

Robert E. Gilbert's 1952 story opens amid a dreamlike cavalry charge, where Lord Potts gilds his saber with a frown and his men shimmer with impossible, shifting detail, as the nature of this pliable reality slowly declares itself. An inventive, surreal piece of social SF about mind, illusion, and the malleability of the world. Read it for imaginative magazine-era SF that plays cleverly with wishes made flesh.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

David Stone