Thomas J. O'Hara 21 min read

A million miles off course, the mail ship MR4 spins helplessly toward the Sun, her refrigeration units losing the battle as the temperature climbs and Hal Burnett twists in agony on his bunk.

Thomas J. O'Hara's 1956 story is a taut hard-SF space opera of a doomed drift toward the Sun. Sharp, tense golden-age SF. Read it for a gripping survival tale where a crippled ship falls toward a fiery death, and rescue is a desperate, uncertain hope.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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