Ben Smith 6 min read

Jubil washed out of the Academy while his friends went on to greatness and to death, and now there are no turns left, only raw space around him and death waiting on a lonely asteroid.

Ben Smith's 1953 story is a somber military space opera of a failure's last chance. Poignant, atmospheric golden-age pulp. Read it for a quiet, reflective tale of a man who missed every opportunity, adrift and alone in the void, facing the reckoning he can no longer avoid.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Milton Berwin