H. Beam Piper & John J. McGuire 55 min read

Altamont pilots his helicopter over the yellow-brown river, bound with his companion for an isolated group whose strange but oddly logical religion he must understand.

H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire's 1954 story is a thoughtful post-apocalyptic and social-SF tale. Sharp, humane golden-age SF. Read it for a story where explorers of a slowly rebuilding post-atomic America find an isolated community whose peculiar faith preserves, in garbled form, a poignant truth about the world that was.

In its time

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

Reading it

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