Robert F. Young 6 min read

Even in his desperate present plight, a man treasures the memory of golden autumn afternoons in the woods, the day he shot eleven squirrels, as the last incarnadine leaves drift earthward.

Robert F. Young's 1958 story is a poignant post-apocalyptic and social-SF tale. Lyrical, elegiac, superbly told. Read it for a beautifully written story that contrasts a cherished pastoral past with a grim present, building through memory toward quiet revelation, in a tender, resonant golden-age meditation on nature, loss, and the falling leaf.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Richard Kluga