Alfred Coppel 10 min read

On his last night home, spaceman Pete Moore and his young wife Glory wander a carnival midway, where a barker cries 'Ride the Rocket! Twice around the universe for 25¢!'

Alfred Coppel's 1955 story is a poignant social-SF space opera. Tender, bittersweet golden-age SF. Read it for a quietly moving story that contrasts a tawdry carnival ride with the real and costly business of spaceflight, capturing the loneliness and sacrifice beneath the dream of the stars, in a warm, humane golden-age piece.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Virgil Finlay