Charles A. Stearns 13 min read

This is really two stories, solar history, and the legend of a misfit named Knucklebone Smith: six foot eight, a hundred sixty-five pounds, horse-faced, and a believer in Destiny.

Charles A. Stearns's 1954 story is a wry, atmospheric colonization space opera. Clever, engaging golden-age SF. Read it for a genial tale of an unlikely hero on the far frontier of the solar system, where a gawky misfit's faith in his own Destiny meets the cold reality of the outer dark.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Herman B. Vestal