George H. Smith 29 min read

You are having the recurring dream that has haunted the world since 1945, the flash, the mushroom cloud, annihilation, only this time you know it's true, the bombs are actually falling.

George H. Smith's 1959 story is a searing dystopian and post-apocalyptic tale of nuclear terror. Vivid, harrowing golden-age SF. Read it for a story that plunges the reader into the shared nightmare of atomic dread, where the long-feared dream of the end becomes, at last, the waking reality of the last days.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Paul Orban