Rog Phillips 1 hr 34 min read

In his inch-thick glass cell aboard the flagship Rover, the deposed tyrant Vilbis lays down his cards with a cruel smile, a prisoner among the last twenty thousand surviving ships of humanity.

Rog Phillips's 1953 story is a sweeping AI-and-post-apocalyptic space opera of a fleeing human fleet. Vivid, imaginative golden-age SF. Read it for a story set aboard a remnant armada limping across the light-years toward Earth, where a caged despot and a robot admiral figure in a struggle for humanity's future.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

1 hr 34 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).

Illustrated by

W. E. Terry