Alfred Coppel 9 min read

Wrapped in silks and furs against the cold, Marley hurries by the black canal waters of a dying Mars toward Tydore's tower, with green Earth hanging low in the sky like a beacon calling him home.

Alfred Coppel's 1951 story is an atmospheric, poetic post-apocalyptic space opera. Evocative, wistful, superbly told. Read it for a lyrical, melancholy tale of a far-future Mars and a man's longing for a lost Earth, rich with the mournful beauty of a dying world, in a beautifully written golden-age piece steeped in wonder, loss, and homesickness for a distant green planet.

In its time

Published in 1951, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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