Erik Fennel 1 hr 47 min read

Evil luck brings a football-sized meteorite to just the wrong coordinates as Number Four spirals down toward Venus, dragging it against a drive nozzle and fouling the ship's positronic accelerator.

Erik Fennel's 1954 story is a rousing colonization and adventure tale of a Venus expedition in peril. Vivid, driven golden-age SF. Read it for a colorful pulp yarn where a freak accident maroons a crew on cloud-wrapped Venus, and the search for survival leads to the planet's fabled lost tribes.

In its time

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

Reading it

1 hr 47 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).

Illustrated by

Kelly Freas