Dorothy De Courcy & John De Courcy 15 min read

The foundling could not have been more than three years old, yet he held a secret destined to bring joy to many unhappy people, here on the bloodiest, most worthless land in the solar system.

John and Dorothy De Courcy's 1954 story sets a tender first-contact mystery on a harshly colonized Venus. Poignant, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a moving tale of an abandoned child on a brutal frontier world, and the hidden gift he carries.

In its time

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

Reading it

15 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).