R. R. Winterbotham 29 min read

In the silence of space aboard The Traveler, Captain Arlen tries and fails to classify his crew as gods or devils, least of all Gheal, the hideous half-human slave brought back from Venus.

R. R. Winterbotham's 1941 story blends colonization and first contact in an eerie, ambitious space-opera tale of creation. Atmospheric, imaginative golden-age SF. Read it for a story that reaches toward the origins of life itself, aboard a rocket carrying gods, devils, and something in between.

In its time

Published in 1941, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Leo Morey