Stephen Marlowe 22 min read

'Want to share it?' Ralph asks his wife, lighting their last cigarette, as Diane watches the asteroids drift past the viewport, three hard years on a busted uranium claim behind them.

Stephen Marlowe's 1956 story (as Milton Lesser) is a poignant space-opera tale of failure and hope in the asteroid belt. Sharp, humane golden-age SF. Read it for a story of a worn-down prospecting couple adrift among the asteroids, and the graveyard of derelict ships that offers one last, dangerous chance.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Harold W. McCauley