Robert W. Krepps 40 min read

A man wakes disoriented on a cold slab in the dark, amid what seem like grotesque stone shapes, only to find himself, embarrassingly, having dozed off among the dinosaur skeletons of a museum.

Robert W. Krepps's 1952 story is a sharp post-apocalyptic and psi-powers tale. Clever, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a story that opens on a moment of disorienting dread and unfolds into something far larger, exploring strange powers and a threatened future, in a well-turned golden-age piece that builds from an ordinary scene toward world-shaking stakes.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

W. E. Terry