Robert Abernathy 1 hr 27 min read

In the moonlit desert night, the 'beetle' wakes in his half-buried armored machine, checks his mirrors and amplifiers, and readies for another night's survival among the prowling machines of prey.

Robert Abernathy's 1955 story is an atmospheric dystopian and post-apocalyptic tale. Vivid, evocative golden-age SF. Read it for a moody, richly imagined story of men reduced to hunted 'drones' in armored machines, prowling a desert of mechanical predators, in a well-turned golden-age piece about a strange, degraded future and the struggle simply to survive the night.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

1 hr 27 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).