Albert Teichner 17 min read

Three scientists bring the aged cosmologist Huddleston their triumph, proof of his own dark prophecy that no starship can survive the galaxy's electron-draining fields.

Albert Teichner's 1961 story is a thoughtful hard-SF and social-SF tale. Sharp, idea-rich golden-age SF. Read it for a cerebral story about why humanity may be forever trapped in its own solar system, and the aged visionary who foresaw it, in a well-turned golden-age piece about the limits of the possible and the reach for the stars.

In its time

Published in 1961, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Dan Adkins