Charles A. Stearns 28 min read

The Earthman Wellesley comes to Ophir in the season of aphelion, its binary suns cold serpent's eyes above the mists that shroud its fern forests and the great hollow organ-pipe cities of legend.

Charles A. Stearns's 1956 story is an atmospheric post-apocalyptic and social-SF tale. Vivid, evocative golden-age SF. Read it for a moody, richly imagined story of a lonely planet of exotic ruins and shabby plantations, where the scamperers of the title figure in a strange and haunting frontier drama.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Paul Orban