Alfred Coppel 11 min read

In the halcyon years after the Terror has passed, humanity spreads to the stars, but the bitterness lingers, and the memory of Jan Carvel, the man who brought the Terror, is accursed.

Alfred Coppel's 1950 story is a somber post-apocalyptic and first-contact tale. Sharp, resonant golden-age SF. Read it for a well-framed story, told as future history, of a dread that once gripped humanity and the man blamed for it, in a thoughtful golden-age piece about fear, memory, and the long shadow cast by catastrophe.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Milton Luros