Stephen Marlowe 26 min read

When nobody aboard the ship remembers where it's going, how can they tell when it has arrived? Rikud has watched space all his life, and now the engines have changed their tone.

Stephen Marlowe's 1951 story is a classic generation-ship tale. Sharp, evocative golden-age SF. Read it for a fine story where the inhabitants of a starship have forgotten they are travelers at all, and one man's dawning unease at the ship's changing hum reawakens the lost sense of wonder.

In its time

Published in 1951, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Harry Rosenbaum