Jerry Sohl 26 min read

There was one, and only one, thing Clifton could do, and even so, he made the worst of a hundred possible choices.

Jerry Sohl's 1956 story opens on a shattered man staring at his dead wife, a grief-struck frame for a tense space-opera tale of fatal decisions. Sharp, emotionally charged golden-age SF. Read it for a gripping story about the one right move, and a man who cannot find it.

In its time

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

Reading it

26 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller