C. M. Kornbluth 12 min read

He had quite a rum-blossom for a kid, but it wasn't the drink; broken veins on his cheeks, and the funny eyes, made the narrator look twice before the boy slid back away from the light.

C. M. Kornbluth's 1952 story is a poignant, humane social-SF space opera about the cost of spaceflight. Sharp, moving golden-age SF. Read it for a quietly devastating classic where the price the individual pays for humanity's conquest of space is written on a young spaceman's ruined face.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

William Ashman