Charles L. Fontenay 25 min read

A lone figure trudges fast across the Hellas Desert toward Alpheus Canal, a brand itching on his forehead, without map or compass and short of oxygen, trying, till he dies, to reach a distant dome.

Charles L. Fontenay's 1957 story is a taut colonization and social-SF tale of a hunted man on Mars. Sharp, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a survival story of an escapee marked and marooned in the Martian desert, driving himself toward a faint hope against the deadly indifference of the red planet.

In its time

Published in 1957, 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

Ed Emshwiller