Search the Sky

Written at the height of the pulp era by two of science fiction’s sharpest satirists, this 1954 novel sends a young man named Ross out among the stars to learn why humanity’s scattered colonies have gone silent. One by one, the worlds he reaches have curdled into something strange. On some, the old cling to power and treat the young as property; on others, women rule and men are ornaments; elsewhere, plain stupidity has become the law of the land. Pohl and Kornbluth use each broken society to poke at the assumptions of their own time, from politics to prejudice, and the humor lands as hard as the warning. A free PDF and EPUB edition is available here.