Thomas S. Gardiner 6 min read

As a plague of 'whispering death' empties the streets of Greater New York, a power magnate watches a trembling galvanometer for a sign of hope.

Thomas S. Gardiner's 1941 story sets its catastrophe against a depopulated metropolis of helmeted survivors, its industrialist hero fixed on a flicker of light that may mean salvation. Somber, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a moody disaster tale about a dying city and one man's desperate watch.

In its time

Published in 1941, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

James V. Taurasi