Jack Douglas 22 min read

Out on the ice-buried planet, Commander Red Stone leads his Free Companions to almost certain death, for a dangerous dream with one chance in a trillion of coming true.

Jack Douglas's 1961 story frames its post-apocalyptic space opera with the grand fatalism of exiles and lost worlds, following a doomed expedition of outcasts. Colorful, sweeping golden-age SF. Read it for a rousing tale about desperate men chasing an impossible hope across a frozen world.

In its time

Published in 1961, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

George Barr