Frederik Pohl 19 min read

Gordy survives the Three-Hour War that ends Detroit and his family, and, grieving and alone, decides to give the ruined world back to the humble ants, with a nudge from a time machine.

Frederik Pohl's 1949 story is a stark, ironic post-apocalyptic and time-travel tale of humanity's replacement. Sharp, resonant golden-age SF. Read it for a haunting story where a broken man tries to hand the future to a species that might do better than we did.

In its time

Published in 1949, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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