Robert Silverberg 3 hr 20 min read

Aboard the great starships, crews age slowly at near-light speed while Earth races ahead in years, and a young man, at odds with that gulf of time, sets out on a quest across a changed world.

Robert Silverberg's 1958 novel, written when he was nineteen, is a brisk adventure and space opera built on the relativity of star travel. Fast, engaging early SF. Read it for young Silverberg exploring the loneliness of the time-dilated spacefarer, in a coming-of-age quest across the centuries.

In its time

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

Reading it

3 hr 20 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).

Illustrated by

Stan Mack