Don Berry 1 hr read

Phoenix I flares into being near a G-type star, and Colonel Richard Harkins glances out at a sun no brighter than a hundred others, a man alone, though the ship knows exactly where they are.

Don Berry's 1958 story builds a taut psi-and-space-opera tale around a lone pilot at the edge of the known. Sharp, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a story of solitude and strange power in deep space, where a single man carries the weight of a mission among the stars.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

1 hr read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller