Charles L. Fontenay 19 min read

There was a time when playing 'The Martianne' was punishable by death, its defiant strains challenging the police in taverns and drawing rooms across an Earth grown weary and afraid of war.

Charles L. Fontenay's 1955 story is a stirring colonization and military-SF tale of a revolutionary anthem. Sharp, evocative golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a banned march becomes the rallying cry of a rebellion, and the power of a forbidden song helps change the fate of two worlds.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Paul Orban