Keith Laumer 1 hr 21 min read

With Earth's situation desperate, the World Secretary weighs a desperate Navy proposal, and the young gray-haired officer waiting outside to carry it into the unknown.

Keith Laumer's 1959 novella opens on a doomed Earth staking everything on one long-shot voyage. Taut, driven military space opera. Read it for a gripping tale of a last-ditch interstellar mission, launched by a world with nothing left to lose.

In its time

Published in 1959, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

1 hr 21 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).