Robert H. Wilson 34 min read

On the Moon, beneath a full silver Earth hanging over the water-city of Nardos, two friends practice a fencing trick, before setting out on a voyage all the way around the star Rigel.

Robert H. Wilson's 1931 story is a lyrical, imaginative hard-SF space opera of interstellar travel and relativity. Vivid, poetic golden-age SF. Read it for a beautifully written tale that pairs a lunar idyll with a light-speed voyage and its haunting cost.

In its time

Published in 1931, during the 1930s, space opera soars.

Reading it

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