Harold Calin 31 min read

A captain hunts his personal demon across the light-years, in a cosmic-scale retelling of Moby Dick.

Harold Calin's 1961 story, narrated by his uneasy executive officer, follows the obsessive Captain Kingsford, sole survivor of the first Aldebaran expedition, back into the deep on a monomaniacal quest that will unmake him. A brooding space-opera meditation on heroism, obsession, and the white whales we chase. Read it for atmospheric golden-age SF that transplants Melville's great obsession to the stars.

In its time

Published in 1961, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Virgil Finlay