Stephen Marlowe 10 min read

'Some tell me it is a foolish war we fight,' the sentry admits, caught daydreaming over the star-pictures his lame brother draws, until a hand comes out of the darkness and clamps over his mouth.

Stephen Marlowe's 1959 story (as Milton Lesser) is a lyrical first-contact and social-SF tale. Sharp, thoughtful golden-age SF. Read it for a story that opens on a captured warrior and reaches toward a profound question of unity and multiplicity, the one and the many, and what lies beyond the ultimate.

In its time

Published in 1959, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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