Fox B. Holden 28 min read

'I guess you could say I hated Kolomar', not like he hated the Comrades, but the man had beaten him out of his general's star and left him stuck commanding a second-rate satellite.

Fox B. Holden's 1954 story stews with rivalry and grievance aboard a Cold War outpost in orbit, building a sharp space-opera tale of authority and its abuses. Wry, pointed golden-age SF. Read it for a story about power, spite, and a man who never made mistakes, told by the man who loathed him.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Joseph Eberle