Murray Leinster 1 hr 8 min read

With their drive blown between the stars and months of repairs ahead, the crew of the Danaë limp to the nearest sun to find a planet where they can plant emergency seeds and renew their food supply.

Murray Leinster's 1955 story is a thoughtful colonization and first-contact tale. Sharp, inventive golden-age SF. Read it for a well-turned survival story where stranded spacefarers must farm an unknown world to stay alive, and find far more than crops waiting there, in a well-crafted golden-age piece from a grandmaster who made competent problem-solving genuinely gripping.

In its time

Published in 1955, 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).

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller