Richard Stockham 30 min read

Why can't you go home again after years in space? Colonel Halter watches the ancient derelict Alpha towed down toward Earth, its watching crew holding a strange, careless calm.

Richard Stockham's 1955 story is an eerie dystopian social-SF tale of returning spacemen and a society changed beyond recognition. Atmospheric, unsettling golden-age SF. Read it for a story that turns the ache of homecoming into a chilling question about who runs the world now.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Mel Hunter