Michael Shaara 31 min read

Finding a cause worth dying for is easy, finding one worth living for is the real problem, thinks Captain Steffens, counting the twelve strange buildings on a long-dead world.

Michael Shaara's 1952 story is a thoughtful, moving first-contact space opera of a marooned mystery in the Coal Sack. Sharp, humane golden-age SF. Read it for a story where the ruins of a temporary camp on a dead planet raise a question deeper than survival.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller