Alfred Coppel 1 hr 8 min read

By the light of a single lamp, the black-hooded High Council of the Maldia ballots in silence to choose an executioner, the might and hate of a proud, dying Martian aristocracy gathered in the dark.

Alfred Coppel's 1950 story is a rousing space-opera adventure. Vivid, atmospheric golden-age pulp. Read it for a colorful pulp yarn of intrigue, rebellion, and derring-do on a decadent dying Mars, where a warrior-maid and a bold hero defy a sinister aristocracy, in the wonder-and-peril style of the classic space-adventure magazines.

In its time

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

Reading it

1 hr 8 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).