Poul Anderson 31 min read

He walks through curling purple mists on ground that rolls and quivers, hearing elfin voices sing words half-remembered, glimpsing a blind and beautiful inhuman face, on a world that drives men mad.

Poul Anderson's 1951 story is an atmospheric, haunting colonization and social-SF tale. Evocative, superbly told. Read it for a beautifully written story of a strange, disorienting world whose eerie beauty unhinges the mind, and the man who must brave it, in a well-turned golden-age piece rich with dreamlike mood, wonder, and a creeping sense of the uncanny.

In its time

Published in 1951, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

31 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Ramon Raymond