Joseph Samachson 22 min read

When a driven man arrives at a cemetery world, what else can it be but journey's end, and the start of a new one?

Joseph Samachson's 1953 story lands the short-tempered, grief-worn Sam Wilson and his young son on a planet of the dead, a taut human space-opera framed by loss. Sharp, character-driven golden-age SF. Read it for a story where the end of a hard road opens, unexpectedly, onto a beginning.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller