Joseph Gilbert 25 min read

A ridiculous little man barely five feet tall stands before a five-hundred-foot spaceship and two billion viewers, declaring himself a new Moses come to lead mankind to hope.

Joseph Gilbert's 1942 story is a thoughtful social-SF space opera. Sweeping, idealistic golden-age SF. Read it for a stirring tale of an unlikely prophet who rekindles humanity's lost hope with the promise of the stars, in an earnest, visionary golden-age piece about faith, purpose, and the eternal human quest for something beyond.

In its time

Published in 1942, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Lawrence Sterne Stevens