Jack Williamson 22 min read

In a lazy future where matter is transmitted instantly anywhere, a bored young couple wearies of easy comfort, and hits upon the wild idea of using the cosmic express to escape to a savage new world.

Jack Williamson's 1931 story is a witty, prophetic hard-SF and social-SF tale of teleportation. Clever, charming golden-age SF. Read it for an early classic of matter transmission, young Williamson imagining a push-button civilization and the couple who long, comically, for a taste of the primitive.

In its time

Published in 1931, during the 1930s, space opera soars.

Reading it

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