William Campbell Gault 19 min read

On the asteroid-plagued Mars-Jupiter run, restless Level-One navigator 'Horse' Collins is one of only three men who can fly it, and the subject of a story imaginatively audacious even for its author.

William Campbell Gault's 1954 story is a daring, provocative dystopian and social-SF tale. Bold, speculative golden-age SF. Read it for a story that gracefully skirts the edge of the outrageous, opening up new worlds of speculation, following an ace navigator into strange territory, in an audacious golden-age piece from a writer known for balancing delicacy with daring.

In its time

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

Reading it

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