John McGreevey 25 min read

When the patrol finds the beautiful, violet-eyed Venusian woman Selo alone in the humidi-hut, she is incoherent, babbling of red dust devils and a name, Yancey, amid a strange and haunting madness.

John McGreevey's 1952 story is an atmospheric colonization and social-SF tale. Vivid, evocative golden-age SF. Read it for a moody story of an earthman, an alluring Venusian woman, and a tragedy on the dust-tortured frontier, unfolding through the fragments of a madwoman's speech, in a well-turned golden-age piece rich with the exotic atmosphere of a colonial Venus.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Tom Beecham