Lester Del Rey 1 hr 2 min read

Norden watches a searing blue point of flame descend from the black sky, an Alien ship, harbinger of a culture that spreads across space with the remorseless destruction of human life.

Lester del Rey's 1954 story is a taut, imaginative psi-powers and social-SF tale. Sharp, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a chilling del Rey story of an implacable alien expansion and humanity's struggle to survive it, blending adventure with real dread, in a brilliantly imagined golden-age tale of interstellar menace and the watch kept over life.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

1 hr 2 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).