Leigh Brackett 52 min read

Wes Kirk shudders with cold anger in the frozen dark, dreaming of killing the Captain and all the Officers, a rebel among people who have forgotten they live aboard a ship.

Leigh Brackett's 1943 story is a superb generation-ship post-apocalyptic tale. Vivid, gripping, superbly styled. Read it for a classic of the 'lost starship' idea, descendants of a stranded crew degraded to freezing savagery, their origins forgotten, and the young rebel who begins to grasp the truth, told with Brackett's tough, atmospheric power.

In its time

Published in 1943, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Robert J. Leydenfrost