Anthony Boucher 35 min read

Three survivors shelter from the deadly agnoton gas that has ended the human race, while the poet Vyrko records mankind's destruction, and constructs a plot he cannot get right.

Anthony Boucher's 1950 story is a subtle, layered post-apocalyptic and time-travel tale. Ingenious, literate, superbly told. Read it for a masterful Boucher story that folds the end of humanity into a clever meditation on old pulp fiction and the loops of time, building through wit and craft toward a satisfying, self-referential twist, in a golden-age gem of real intelligence.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Paul Pierre