Tom W. Harris 9 min read

It was Orley Mattup's killing of the old lab technician that really made us hate him, Mattup, a guard who sold out to the Outsiders when they took everything over.

Tom W. Harris's 1958 story builds a tense post-apocalyptic and psi tale of occupation, resistance, and hidden powers at a Kentucky reactor. Sharp, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a story of humans under alien rule, and the strange edge the resistance discovers it holds.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Becker