Robert Silverberg 20 min read

A warlord who single-handedly held his city together through the atomic fire now faces a rival bent on wiping Center City off the map.

Robert Silverberg's 1957 story sets the fierce, city-devoted Lloyd Riddell against the threat of Northburg and the fanatic David Barr, in a post-atomic America of feuding rubble-states. Grim, driving military SF about the men who rule the ruins. Read it for hard-bitten early Silverberg about power and survival after the bombs.

In its time

Published in 1957, 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

Virgil Finlay