Bryce Walton 14 min read

Ten or fifteen people stand in the gray rain to see Stevens off, not cheering, hunched in their storm-coats, no one raising a hand as he clanks toward the 'Coffin' in his pressure suit.

Bryce Walton's 1951 story is a tense, atmospheric hard-SF space opera of a dangerous first crossing. Vivid, moody golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a volunteer straps into an experimental craft to break through a barrier no man has passed, leaving behind, unknowing, the woman who loves him.

In its time

Published in 1951, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ramon Raymond