Robert F. Young 19 min read

Godhead can be a sense of fulfillment that comes from the power to create. On Jupiter, at 169 below zero in a grayish murk, the machine 8M sinks a shaft, remembering a rosy fireside long ago.

Robert F. Young's 1963 story is a thoughtful colonization and social-SF tale of a mind housed in a Jovian mining machine. Lyrical, reflective golden-age SF. Read it for a poignant story about consciousness, memory, and creation on the crushing surface of the giant planet.

In its time

Published in 1963, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Virgil Finlay