Arthur Dekker Savage 11 min read

On Mars the trees are few and stunted, old Doc Yoris says, and though there's gold aplenty, trees, it turns out, can be far more important than gold.

Arthur Dekker Savage's 1957 story is a wry adventure and colonization tale. Clever, folksy golden-age SF. Read it for a genial, tall-tale-flavored story narrated by an Oregon timber-country old-timer, where the value of scarce Martian trees drives a homespun frontier yarn, in a warm, offbeat golden-age piece with a distinctive down-home voice.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Philip B. Parsons