Theodore L. Thomas 20 min read

Hanford Webster, third officer of the Polaris and cursed with a first-class jinx, watches in horror as nine of the ten-ship Earth fleet disintegrate in his visi-plate above Uranus.

Theodore L. Thomas's 1953 story is a tense military space opera of catastrophe and a hard-luck man. Sharp, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a spacer plagued by inexplicable bad luck becomes the lone survivor of a fleet disaster, and must reckon with whether his jinx is curse, coincidence, or something more.

In its time

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

Reading it

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