Ivar Jorgensen 9 min read

The comet is discovered at 10 a.m. Friday, mid-quarrel, and the calm radio voice delivers the verdict: the Earth is doomed.

Ivar Jorgensen's 1956 story cuts from a bitter marital fight to the announcement of the world's end, building a post-apocalyptic tale from the human scale up. Sharp, dramatic golden-age SF. Read it for a story that meets the apocalypse in the middle of an ordinary, angry morning.

In its time

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

Reading it

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