Richard Wilson 5 min read

On a grassy hill above an orchard, an old man of the World Government tells a younger one the long story of the colonizing.

Richard Wilson's 1956 story frames its reflective colonial SF as a quiet conversation between generations, apple trees and autumn sun setting the mood. Thoughtful, elegiac golden-age SF. Read it for a contemplative tale about empire, memory, and the human cost of settling the stars.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Emmanuel Stallman