Bryce Walton 32 min read

Eddie Bowren, first man to escape Earth, first bound for Mars, lies in a hidden cubicle as a doctor's hypo begins to change him into something else, for the greatest adventure any man ever had.

Bryce Walton's 1953 story is a sharp colonization and dystopian tale with a twist. Clever, unsettling golden-age SF. Read it for a story of a stowaway's secret, transforming voyage to Mars, building through mystery toward a revelation its title slyly foreshadows, in a well-turned golden-age piece with a sting in the tail.

In its time

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

Reading it

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