Fox B. Holden 40 min read

From his fore-waist bridge, Captain Nicholas Joel watches the jeep come bounding recklessly out of the cultivated forest across the yellow desert, and knows already what his excited men will shout.

Fox B. Holden's 1955 story is a sharp colonization and social-SF tale of a fateful survey. Clever, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a starship captain awaits his landing party's report on a promising new world, and the discovery they bring back carries stakes larger than anyone expected.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Paul Orban