Alexei Panshin 45 min read

At fourteen, a girl of the great Ship is dropped onto a colony planet for Trial, thirty days to survive among the rough 'Mudeaters' below, or die.

Alexei Panshin's 1963 story, later expanded into the classic novel 'Rite of Passage,' launches a sharp coming-of-age space opera about a sheltered Ship-dweller thrust into a harder world. Thoughtful, vivid, humane. Read it for the seed of a beloved SF novel about growing up between the stars and the dirt.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Norman Nodel