Erik Fennel 1 hr 14 min read

Playing dead to fool a sniper on the sand-drifted streets of a deserted Martian city, a wartime veteran plots his next move.

Erik Fennel's 1947 story drops Nick Tinker into a lethal night on Mars, an old battlefield trick saving his life as the drug Gravinol clears his brain. Vivid, atmospheric planetary adventure with a hard-bitten hero and a lost-world promise beneath the surface. Read it for tense, evocative golden-age SF among the ruins and cold stars of a dying Mars.

In its time

Published in 1947, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

1 hr 14 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Herman B. Vestal