Edward W. Ludwig 25 min read

Onward speeds the Wanderer through cold, silent infinity, and more awful than the blackness is the loneliness of the six men aboard, who wear it like a shroud, savage with a desperate hope.

Edward W. Ludwig's 1954 story is an atmospheric colonization space opera of isolation and madness. Vivid, evocative golden-age SF. Read it for a moody story of a long-voyaging crew pushed to the edge by the crushing solitude of deep space, where noble dreams and madness draw dangerously close.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Paul Orban