H. B. Fyfe 28 min read

With everyone else gone off-world, Earth is left perfect for gracious living, but there's nothing gracious about it, as Robert curses at his tennis robots on an empty planet.

H. B. Fyfe's 1952 story spins a wry dystopian social-SF tale from a nearly deserted future Earth. Sharp, ironic golden-age SF. Read it for a story about the last few humans rattling around an abandoned world, served by machines and starved of real society.

In its time

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

Reading it

28 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Louis Marchetti