Lucius Daniel 23 min read

For the fourth year running, a reporter comes to interview the man behind a failing Mars project, and this time he wonders aloud why anyone will bother sending someone next year at all.

Lucius Daniel's 1959 story is a wry first-contact and social-SF tale of persistence, ridicule, and the dream of reaching Mars. Sharp, thoughtful golden-age SF. Read it for a story about a much-mocked endeavor and the stubborn conviction that it just might work.

In its time

Published in 1959, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller