Algis Budrys 26 min read

'I've come a long, long way to die alone,' thinks David Greaves as his ship, built with his own fortune when no government would risk the flight, tumbles broken through the mists of Venus.

Algis Budrys's 1963 story opens on a doomed pioneer's crash-landing, building a taut space-opera tale of one man's obsessive reach for a new world. Vivid, driven golden-age SF. Read it for a gripping story of a private dreamer who spent everything to be first, and won't quit even as the ground rushes up.

In its time

Published in 1963, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Virgil Finlay