Evelyn E. Smith 16 min read

Once these irritating farewells are over, Johnson can begin to live as he has dreamed, so he goes to Idlewild to see the others off, for it is the last conventional gesture he will ever have to make.

Evelyn E. Smith's 1957 story is a poignant, ironic post-apocalyptic and social-SF tale. Sharp, humane golden-age SF. Read it for a quietly affecting story of the man who chooses to stay behind when humanity departs a dying Earth, and the sentimental attachment that shapes his solitary destiny.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

16 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).