Gaston Derreaux 12 min read

In an ancient world of skull-temples and forgotten gods, So-qi, King of Oas, sends his armies to conquer and slay, heaping ever more skulls before his idols as his people forget the true God.

Gaston Derreaux's 1958 story is an atmospheric post-apocalyptic and social-SF tale set in a mythic prehistory. Vivid, sweeping, of its era. Read it for a colorful epic of empire, blood-worship, and prophecy in a lost antediluvian age, a story of tyranny and coming judgment told in the grand register of scripture and legend.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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