Raymond Z. Gallun 4 hr 22 min read

Nelsen and Ramos speed toward Mars in a tiny plastic-bubble spacecraft, alert, for it never pays to take anything for granted in the Big Vacuum, where outlaws drift, waiting for a victim to strike.

Raymond Z. Gallun's 1961 novel is a rousing colonization space opera of the human expansion into space. Vivid, driven golden-age SF. Read it for a colorful tale of ordinary young people bootstrapping their way off Earth and out among the planets, braving the perils of the void in the great push to settle the solar system.

In its time

Published in 1961, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

4 hr 22 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).