Everett B. Cole 1 hr 27 min read

Flying over green hills, a District Leader passes the skeletal spire that was once a great bridge, a crumbling monument to a war that reshaped the world.

Everett B. Cole's 1957 story opens on a haunted post-war landscape, building a military-and-social SF tale amid the ruins of old conflict. Thoughtful, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a story where the wreckage of the past shadows a future still reckoning with the ultimate weapon.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

1 hr 27 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).

Illustrated by

Alexander Leydenfrost