Jesse Roarke 34 min read

'Men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither.' Disturbed by murky waters rising in his vast subconscious, a man leaves his Pad, mops his brow, and finds he is hungry.

Jesse Roarke's 1962 story is a lyrical, philosophical social-SF and space-opera tale of awakening and endurance. Thoughtful, evocative golden-age SF. Read it for a meditative story that takes its title from King Lear and finds deep stirrings beneath an ordinary future man's calm.

In its time

Published in 1962, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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