Kris Neville 27 min read

Under a low bluish sun, on the green dust of the Martian desert, the neon blazes over a door: 30, BEAUTIFUL HOSTESSES, 30. Mary must be expecting that Earthman; the Azmuth landed this morning.

Kris Neville's 1958 story is a moody colonization and first-contact tale set in a seedy Martian city. Atmospheric, melancholy golden-age SF. Read it for a quietly affecting story of frontier loneliness and longing on a well-worn Mars, where a woman waits for a man from Earth.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

27 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller