Richard Stockham 18 min read

A husband and wife argue through the night, watches checked with fearful eyes, rockets blasting overhead, as she prepares to go through with something at last.

Richard Stockham's 1963 story builds quiet dread around a couple on the eve of a fateful, secret act in a rocket-haunted city. Tense, atmospheric post-apocalyptic SF that withholds its hand. Read it for a taut golden-age tale where a marriage and a world seem poised on the same brink.

In its time

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

Reading it

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