Alfred Coppel 20 min read

Ankle-deep in the viscous mud of Venusport Base, in the greenish rain and rising fog, Lieutenant Commander Strykalski surveys his jinxed new command with a jaundiced eye.

Alfred Coppel's 1948 story is a fast, atmospheric hard-SF space opera of a hard-luck ship and a beleaguered officer. Vivid, colorful golden-age SF. Read it for a rousing adventure that drops its wry hero into the muck of Venus with a cursed vessel and a mission to pull off.

In its time

Published in 1948, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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