Donald A. Wollheim 6 min read

Trapped in a bomb-proof cellar beneath a collapsed building, two survivors, a narrator and a little gray-bearded old man, wait to be dug out, and fall to talking about nothing.

Donald A. Wollheim's 1942 story spins a philosophical hard-SF and social-SF tale from a conversation amid the rubble of war. Sharp, thoughtful golden-age SF. Read it for a story where two trapped men, with nothing to do but talk, arrive at something surprisingly large.

In its time

Published in 1942, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

John B. Musacchia