Fredric Brown Mack Reynolds 23 min read

Four men come down in a lifeboat to the loyal, whispering trees of Venus, and one sits hunched in the prow, his face bandaged, his eyes hidden, needing his greatcoat only until this morning.

Fredric Brown and Mack Reynolds's 1957 story is a spare, haunting post-apocalyptic tale with a devastating final turn. Sharp, resonant golden-age SF. Read it for a beautifully crafted story about the end of things, best entered knowing as little as possible.

In its time

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

Reading it

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