Jim Harmon 24 min read

A young narrator sticks with a crackpot old man on the night Man reaches the Moon, convinced that the goner might just be a comer.

Jim Harmon's 1957 story opens with Doc gripping a stranger's collar and prophesying the lunar landing, spinning a wry space-opera tale of an odd pair and a strange gift. Light, comic golden-age SF with a warm heart. Read it for a genial story about loyalty to a old man everyone else writes off.

In its time

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

Reading it

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