Charles V. De Vet 7 min read

Given a month to live, a cold-blooded poisoner watches his latest victim die, and resolves to spend his own last days finding out what comes after death by asking a dead man.

Charles V. De Vet's 1953 story is a dark psi-powers and social-SF tale. Sharp, macabre golden-age SF. Read it for a grim, gripping story of a dying murderer's obsession with the afterlife, and the chilling lengths he'll go to glimpse it, in a well-turned golden-age piece with a mordant edge and a reaper waiting at the end.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

W. E. Terry