Donald A. Wollheim 9 min read

A Master Astrologer, willing to give his life if only the torch of learning can be passed on, recalls the strange phrase whispered to him decades ago: 'The lights upon the Morning Star.'

Donald A. Wollheim's 1942 story is a somber social-SF and space-opera tale of buried knowledge in a benighted age. Thoughtful, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a story of scholarship kept alive against superstition, and a mysterious message that outlives the men who carry it.

In its time

Published in 1942, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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