George H. Smith 21 min read

Sitting in the mud of a ruined building in mecho-armor, Sergeant Coleman muses over the radio that Julius Caesar, calling Paris a mud town, was closer to the truth than 'the city of light.'

George H. Smith's 1955 story is a grim, atmospheric post-apocalyptic and social-SF war tale. Sharp, evocative golden-age SF. Read it for a bleak, vivid story of armored soldiers slogging through the wreckage of a devastated Europe, in a last crusade whose true nature slowly comes clear.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller