Stephen Marlowe 1 hr 10 min read

Twenty years after the greatest disaster in interstellar history, a five-year-old girl and a Cyclops are the last survivors of a doomed starship.

Stephen Marlowe's 1958 story frames its tale with an encyclopedia entry on the lost Star of Fire, then drops us aboard as little Robin Sinclair, furious over a stolen doll, wanders a deck that will soon be the setting for catastrophe. Atmospheric, imaginative space opera with a child's-eye vulnerability at its heart. Read it for vivid golden-age adventure that opens on a note of doom and wonder.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

1 hr 10 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).