Nick B. Williams 3 hr 35 min read

For 270 years, America has been sealed off from the world behind an impenetrable wall of raging atomic fury, until patrolman Emmett O'Hara does the impossible and breaks through, and lives.

Nick B. Williams's 1956 story is a rousing dystopian and post-apocalyptic adventure. Vivid, imaginative golden-age SF. Read it for a colorful tale of a mysterious 'Atomic America' cut off for centuries, and one man's breathtaking penetration of the barrier into a transformed continent, in a fast-moving golden-age adventure of discovery.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

3 hr 35 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).