H. B. Fyfe 11 min read

Two weary men hack an old axe into a great tree beside a cracked and patched highway, while a bearded lookout keeps watch, outlaws in a fallen America, waiting for the cut to fall.

H. B. Fyfe's 1952 story unfolds a first-contact and social-SF tale in a rundown near-future. Sharp, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a story that opens on hard men felling a tree by a broken road and reaches toward a surprising light.

In its time

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

Reading it

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