Walter M. Miller 35 min read

On a legend-haunted Mars, a thief hangs by his wrists at the post, waiting to die like a thief, his lips moving as the wan sunlight glistens on his naked back.

Walter M. Miller Jr.'s 1952 story (by the author of 'A Canticle for Leibowitz') is a taut, mythic tale of theft, survival, and old Martian gods. Sharp, evocative golden-age SF. Read it for a gripping story where a condemned thief's fate is bound up with the ancient legends of a dying world.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

35 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).