Kendell Foster Crossen 35 min read

Empty ships, patched voices, and a curt invitation to Venus, what had Clyde Ellery and the other atom-plague survivors to lose? They forgot there are many kinds of death.

Kendell Foster Crossen's 1952 Planet Stories novel is an atmospheric first-contact and post-apocalyptic tale. Vivid, ominous golden-age pulp. Read it for a moody story where the survivors of atomic catastrophe accept a mysterious summons from Venus, and find the salvation offered them is stranger and darker than they dreamed.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Herman B. Vestal