Bolling Branham 21 min read

'Curse it, I am too old to go to space,' the old man on Earth's moon frets, aching with the breath of romance each time the spacemen sing their Saturn 'Home Song' in his ears.

Bolling Branham's 1952 story is a wistful hard-SF space opera of longing for the far planets. Evocative, warm golden-age SF. Read it for a reflective tale, told by a moon-bound old-timer, of the wonders of Saturn and the young spaceman Trase Barnes who lived the dream he can only hear about.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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