Richard Stockham 27 min read

Returning to a ruined, dust-choked Earth after a long search among the stars, a man and woman look down on the cracked land and shrunken seas, and a voice on the radio cries out that they've made it.

Richard Stockham's 1954 story is a poignant post-apocalyptic and social-SF tale. Elegiac, thoughtful golden-age SF. Read it for a spare, resonant story of homecoming to a devastated world and the search for something worth living for, in a quietly powerful golden-age meditation on hope, home, and greener grass.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller