F. L. Wallace 39 min read

Space life expectancy has climbed to twenty-five months and six days, a full month's gain, but it's still not enough, and across the void, families fret over children they can barely see.

F. L. Wallace's 1954 story is a poignant space-opera and adventure tale of the human cost of the void. Sharp, humane golden-age SF. Read it for a story that cuts between the grim statistics of spacemen's short lives and the ordinary families waiting far away, in a tale of the long, hard, seemingly impossible voyage home.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Dick Francis