Frank W. Coggins 5 min read

For twenty years, marooned alone on Mars, Professor Pettibone has risen each morning, faced distant Earth, and recited a child's cheerful rhyme to keep from losing the power of speech.

Frank W. Coggins's 1960 story is a poignant, gentle first-contact and hard-SF tale of solitude and hope. Wistful, warm golden-age SF. Read it for a touching story of a castaway's long faithful wait on the red planet, and the day, at last, that his twenty years of anticipation come due.

In its time

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

Reading it

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