Robert Abernathy 22 min read

At sunset the lovers Var and Neena come in sight of the black, geometric Ryzga mountain, a place of ancient dread, where they must wake sleeping powers left over from a fallen age.

Robert Abernathy's 1954 story is an atmospheric post-apocalyptic tale. Vivid, evocative golden-age SF. Read it for a haunting far-future story of psychically-gifted folk confronting the relics and revived masters of a vanished technological civilization, in a well-turned golden-age piece rich with mood, wonder, and the weight of a buried past.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Kelly Freas