Jack Bradley 15 min read

The first half mile into the swamp wasn't so bad, but now Mallard feels really afraid, for there are things in here no spaceman has seen, and his little blaster is about as useful as a popgun.

Jack Bradley's 1952 story is a vivid, atmospheric space-opera adventure on a deadly Mercury. Driven, colorful golden-age pulp. Read it for a rousing pulp yarn where a spaceman and a webbed-footed Mercurian swamp-girl brave express-fast plant-slugs and worse, on a hunt into the perilous heart of an alien swamp.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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