Dave Dryfoos 14 min read

They say Old Arch was born on Earth in 3042, learned pilotage and mining, lost his wife and child, and by the year 4000 was a familiar wild-haired figure across the Domed Cities.

Dave Dryfoos's 1955 story is an atmospheric post-apocalyptic and social-SF tale of a wandering holy fool. Evocative, mythic golden-age SF. Read it for a story told like legend, of a broken old prophet of the Plains and the strange things he sold beneath a lost and dusty sky.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Paul Orban