Poul Anderson 1 hr 18 min read

Basil Donovan is drunk again in the Golden Planet, boots on the table, tarnished captain's stars at his collar, his eyes smoldering with an old rage in a war-shattered town.

Poul Anderson's 1952 story is a rich, romantic psi-powers space opera of a fallen nobleman drawn toward a deadly stellar graveyard. Vivid, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for muscular early Anderson, a brooding hero, a lost cause, and a haunted region of space where ships go to die.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

1 hr 18 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).

Illustrated by

Herman B. Vestal