Clifford D. Simak 53 min read

Alone on the almost-unknown moon of Pluto, Frederick West finds an impossible thing: a glittering pyramid of hundreds of bottles, where nothing should be, at the frozen edge of the solar system.

Clifford D. Simak's 1950 story is an atmospheric horror-tinged space opera. Eerie, imaginative, well-told. Read it for a moody Simak tale of cosmic mystery at the rim of the known worlds, where a lonely explorer confronts an inexplicable structure and a call from beyond, in a haunting golden-age blend of wonder and dread.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Virgil Finlay