Frank Quattrocchi 1 hr 9 min read

Rootless and footloose, a spaceman dreams of coming home, but Robert Craig learns never to bet on a homesick dream, starting with a punch-card that won't clear at the clerk's counter.

Frank Quattrocchi's 1951 story is a wry, poignant social-SF space opera about a returning spacer and the home he longs for. Sharp, humane golden-age SF. Read it for a bittersweet tale where bureaucratic red tape frames a deeper question, whether a wanderer of the void can ever really go home again.

In its time

Published in 1951, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

1 hr 9 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller