John L. Chapman 8 min read

'There's nothing like a good quart of scotch when you're falling into the sun,' says the wiry French biologist, while the doctor sputters that he actually seems to be enjoying their doom.

John L. Chapman's 1941 story finds gallows humor aboard a ship pulled helplessly toward the sun. Sharp, atmospheric hard-SF space opera. Read it for a tense, wry tale of men facing a fiery death in a cramped cabin, and the desperate ingenuity it may take to survive.

In its time

Published in 1941, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Michael Mirando