Murray Leinster 22 min read

Pop Young is the one known man who can endure life on the Moon's far side, alone in a shack at the Big Crack's edge, his ability whispered to owe something to a ghastly old head-wound.

Murray Leinster's 1955 story is a taut, atmospheric hard-SF space opera of secrets, memory, and greed on the lunar frontier. Sharp, ingenious golden-age SF. Read it for a clever tale where a lonely old caretaker on the far side of the Moon guards a truth worth killing for.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Kelly Freas