Tom W. Harris 13 min read

To a farm boy, the glass rocket in Johnson's pasture is all the promise in the world, but to his mother and grandmother it's a beautiful, terrible evil.

Tom W. Harris's 1957 story follows young Pete stealing across the fields to question the rocketman before the ship departs, caught between wonder and the women who fear it. A tender, evocative piece of space-age SF about the generational gap between dreamers and the earthbound. Read it for wistful golden-age SF about a boy, a rocket, and the pull of the stars.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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