H. L. Gold 32 min read

Rising in his stirrups on a saddle-lizard, MacAloon peers through the blinding white fog of Venus at the black ocean, where, his terrified fishman guide hisses, the centipedes are ready to march.

H. L. Gold's 1943 story is a colorful, atmospheric colonization and first-contact space opera on a misty Venus. Vivid, fast golden-age pulp. Read it for a rousing tale of frontier peril amid the fog-drowned swamps of Venus and the monstrous menace stirring within them.

In its time

Published in 1943, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Joseph Doolin