Randall Garrett Robert Silverberg 54 min read

Why did every man who stepped off the ship into this peaceful valley promptly drop dead, tough spacemen reduced to skeletons in a world of contentment? Peter and Sherri must solve it, and live.

Randall Garrett and Robert Silverberg's 1956 story is a taut lost-world and adventure mystery. Sharp, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a survey team confronts a deadly, idyllic valley that kills all who enter, and two survivors race to unravel the secret of the Judas Valley before it claims them too.

In its time

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

Reading it

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