William F. Nolan 16 min read

In the windless dark, Lewis Stillman presses into the shadows along Wilshire Boulevard, automatic ready, gliding past ravaged shops through a Los Angeles turned into an immense moonlit graveyard.

William F. Nolan's 1957 story is a haunting post-apocalyptic and first-contact tale of a lone survivor in a dead city. Atmospheric, chilling golden-age SF. Read it for a superbly moody story of one man stealing through the ruins of L.A., hunted by shadows, in a world where he may be the last of his kind.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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