Irving E. Cox 29 min read

The old ship wheezes into the landing slot, and Greg, old at forty, as antiquated as his patched vessel, thinks bitterly that he gave humanity the stars, and in twenty years they forgot.

Irving E. Cox's 1955 story is a poignant colonization and social-SF tale of a forgotten hero. Sharp, humane golden-age SF. Read it for a story of an aging pioneer of space, cast aside by a soft new generation that has forgotten the price of the frontier he opened, in a bitter and moving meditation on progress.

In its time

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

Reading it

29 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

W. E. Terry