Bryce Walton 17 min read

The crew slumbers in its communal bed of protoplasm, dreaming a contented Lotus dream and singing softly, but Kelly's stubborn will insists on going out, and Kelly knows how to wake them.

Bryce Walton's 1958 story (as Kenneth O'Hara) spins an eerie space opera from a strange symbiotic ship's-crew and one rebellious member. Atmospheric, inventive golden-age SF. Read it for an unsettling tale of a mind that refuses to dissolve into blissful oblivion with the rest.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Paul Orban