Walter M. Miller 49 min read

After countless generations, a horde of gleaming ships crosses the skies of a forgetful Earth at twilight, and the children of the planet come out to gape, half in wonder, half in fear.

Walter M. Miller's 1954 story is a thoughtful, atmospheric colonization and social-SF tale. Sharp, resonant golden-age SF. Read it for a fine story by the author of A Canticle for Leibowitz, the return of star-flung humanity to an Earth that has forgotten it, exploring loyalty, kinship, and the ties that bind scattered peoples across the void.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Kelly Freas