Damon Knight 23 min read

Peter Karson is dead, the dark blood still oozing from his crushed face, and the great banks of machinery around the silent room will never come to life again.

Damon Knight's 1944 story is a somber, atmospheric first-contact and post-apocalyptic tale. Vivid, brooding golden-age SF. Read it for an early Knight story of loss and vengeance beneath the indifferent stars, where a death in a silent room of dead machines opens onto something vast and cold.

In its time

Published in 1944, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Graham Ingels