George Edrich 26 min read

'Offences against the State meant elimination in the Black Passage. Death.' In the year 2207, condemned prisoners walk the lightless underground tunnels away from Last City, into the dark.

George Edrich's 1953 story unfolds a bleak lost-world and post-apocalyptic tale of exiles in a subterranean future. Atmospheric, tense golden-age SF. Read it for a story told from the black passages beneath a tyrannical future, where the condemned journey toward an unknown fate.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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