Ben Bova 44 min read

Returning to Titan after five years, haunted Dr. Sidney Lee finds the bleak port unchanged, and the ancient, enigmatic alien towers still waiting, holding secrets that nearly destroyed him.

Ben Bova's 1962 novel is a thoughtful hard-SF space opera. Sharp, atmospheric, well-crafted. Read it for an early work by a future genre leader, a moody mystery of enigmatic alien ruins on Saturn's moon and the man drawn back to unlock them, in a well-built golden-age tale of discovery, danger, and the burden of the past.

In its time

Published in 1962, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller