Gary Wright 33 min read

A Terran officer finds himself, baffled, aboard a wind-driven sailing ship on a strange hot sea, a God Helper who doesn't know his own mission.

Gary Wright's 1963 story strands Comet Colonel John Ward in an alien maritime world of singing sails and pursuing ships, wondering what the hell he's doing there. Vivid, atmospheric space opera that fuses the age of sail with the space age. Read it for evocative golden-age SF that sets its spacefarer among wind, water, and mystery.

In its time

Published in 1963, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

John Giunta