Tom Godwin 27 min read

Struck by a hyperspace vortex, a transport of Earth colonists and Frontier Guards is flung across the galaxy and crash-lands, broken and driveless, on an unknown grassy world beside a forest.

Tom Godwin's 1957 story is a rousing first-contact and survival tale of castaways on an alien planet. Sharp, humane golden-age SF. Read it for a story where the shipwrecked survivors of a hurled starship must forge a new life on a strange world, and win, against all odds, one last victory.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Virgil Finlay