Robert Donald Locke 38 min read

Life and the future belong to the strong, so Dollard laughed as he fled a dying Earth, having poisoned his own crew to secure his escape. But the last laugh was yet to come.

Robert Donald Locke's 1953 story opens on a chillingly ruthless survivor, building a taut, morally charged space opera. Sharp, ironic golden-age SF. Read it for a cold-blooded tale of a man who thinks strength is everything, and the reckoning that waits.

In its time

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

Reading it

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