Irving E. Cox 43 min read

The starship Olympus can never go home; her crew must live among a new world's savages, but savages, Captain Theusaman believes, might yet be set on the road to knowledge.

Irving E. Cox's 1953 story is a thoughtful colonization and social-SF tale. Sharp, resonant golden-age SF. Read it for a story of marooned star-travelers who set out to uplift a primitive world, and the hard, ironic lessons that follow, in a well-turned golden-age piece about civilization, knowledge, and the burdens of playing god to the sons of tomorrow.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Tom Beecham