Mack Reynolds 17 min read

Alexander could not afford powerful neighbors, so he conquered on and on to India, and a spreading Earth, meeting alien races, may find itself bound by the same relentless logic.

Mack Reynolds's 1953 story is a shrewd first-contact and military-SF meditation on why civilizations expand and fight. Thoughtful, sharp golden-age SF. Read it for a story that reads the deep logic of empire into humanity's first contacts among the stars.

In its time

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

Reading it

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