Richard A. Sternbach 11 min read

A gigantic figure sits atop a mountain, watching fires glow and explosions shake the plains below, while beside him a smaller figure sadly pleads: 'Try again, father.'

Richard A. Sternbach's 1959 story is a stark, mythic hard-SF and horror parable. Sharp, resonant golden-age SF. Read it for a brief, powerful story cast as a dialogue between a godlike father and son over the fate of a self-destroying humanity, and the terrible question of whether to give us one more chance.

In its time

Published in 1959, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Raymond F. Houlihan