S. J. Byrne 1 hr 59 min read

A dying world's people build an artificial radioactive sky to warm themselves, and win an eternal, starless tropical paradise.

S. J. Byrne's 1952 story imagines the Xlarnans surviving their fading sun by engineering a self-warming ionosphere, then confronting the consequences across time. Ambitious, idea-rich time-travel SF with a strong world-building conceit. Read it for imaginative golden-age SF about a civilization that remade its own sky to survive.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

1 hr 59 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).