Walt Richmond Leigh Richmond 3 hr read

Chief engineer Mike Blackhawk clambers across the rope netting on the hull of the great space wheel he designed, inspecting the gold-and-dark plated sphere that will carry him where he wasn't going.

Walt and Leigh Richmond's 1963 story is a solid hard-SF space opera. Sharp, credible golden-age SF. Read it for a well-researched tale of building and crewing a space station and the surprises of real spaceflight, blending genuine engineering with adventure, in a well-turned golden-age piece, its title from a spaceman's rueful lament, about going where you never meant to go.

In its time

Published in 1963, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

3 hr read (a novel-length work, settle in).

Illustrated by

John Schoenherr