Irving E. Cox 1 hr 8 min read

Hands shake Lanny awake an hour before dawn, 'Get up, boy, we have to leave', and his foster brother Gill, shoulder wrapped in homespun, must expose his wound to the sun before he can heal it.

Irving E. Cox's 1955 story is an atmospheric post-apocalyptic and social-SF tale of mutated survivors. Vivid, evocative golden-age SF. Read it for a story of the almost-human descendants of catastrophe, where strange new powers and old human failings mingle in a boy's coming-of-age on a transformed Earth.

In its time

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

Reading it

1 hr 8 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).