Fritz Leiber 25 min read

'Effie, what the devil are you up to?' Her husband's voice chops through her terrified rapture, for she is looking at the green Moon, and at a beautiful face pleading from the poisoned dark.

Fritz Leiber's 1952 story is a haunting post-apocalyptic and social-SF tale. Sharp, poignant golden-age SF. Read it for a story where survivors of atomic catastrophe cling to life sealed away from a contaminated world, and one woman is tempted by a beauty, and a freedom, that safety forbids.

In its time

Published in 1952, 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

David Stone