Dean Evans 21 min read

On the eve of the annual synthi-rain, all Mars settles down for the big sleep, and a lone fuelport attendant thinks about closing up, until one last hull-weary ship comes banging into its cradle.

Dean Evans's 1954 story sets a wry, atmospheric colonization-and-dystopia tale against a strange Martian ritual. Sharp, evocative golden-age SF. Read it for a story that opens on the hush before an artificial rain and finds something unsettling in the routine.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Kelly Freas