William L. Hamling 17 min read

Making camp high on a swelling hill, MacMartree watches their ship gleam like a slender candle on the plain below, as the fast sun plunges under and night rushes in over a strange new world.

William L. Hamling's 1952 story is an atmospheric first-contact and space-opera tale of explorers on an alien world. Evocative, thoughtful golden-age SF. Read it for a story steeped in the wonder and unease of a strange planet where day and night race by in four-hour spans.

In its time

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

Reading it

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