Lester Del Rey 2 hr 24 min read

Dave stares up at a crazy patchwork sky and sees, impossibly, a rift, a hole where there are no stars, only a strange colorless nothing, and the points of light retreating from its edge.

Lester del Rey's 1954 novel is an inventive alternate-history and social-SF adventure. Clever, imaginative, briskly told. Read it for a fine del Rey tale where a modern man wakes in a world governed by magic and a solid crystal sky, and must use reason and nerve to survive a reality run by very different rules.

In its time

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

Reading it

2 hr 24 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).