Synopsis

4000 years into the future after the Earth has been conquered in 1977 by the alien Sarn, a group of humans aided by a mysterious being called Aesir, attempt to break free from their slavery.

History

First publication: Astounding October 1937

Written as by Don A. Stuart.

Review

I love these better early SF stories. You still have a lot of the naivety of the relatively amateur writers that appeared with the first SF pulp magazines, so the characters are not as good as we might like. But here and in the few others like this you do have a sense of character being built and you do have a solid story. Along with it you have some of the coolest, craziest imaginings that have not really been topped. The Sarn with their four tentacle-like arms. Aesir, a being of impenetrable blackness. Here you have the wide-eyed sense of wonder that gave the SF genre its start and still comes through in the best of today’ SF, like Project Hail Mary. This is where SF is at it’ greatest strength. Unfortunately this was published only one year before Campbell took over editing Astounding/Analog. He was just coming into his best as a writer. He did publish a follow up, “Cloak of Aesir,” in 1939.
-GregK