Richard Rein Smith 18 min read

Crawling through evil-smelling mud toward a camouflaged shack by a dead Martian canal, a bitter man reflects that mankind's every great achievement has ended in war.

Richard Rein Smith's 1958 story is a wry, pointed first-contact and social-SF tale. Sharp, ironic golden-age SF. Read it for a thoughtful story set against a war with the Martians, questioning the justice of the fight and the roots of human conflict, in a mordant golden-age piece about violence, boredom, and the beast within.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Richard Kluga