The Burnt Planet by William Brittain

Podcast: Auditory Anthology · Keith Conrad / Darren Marlar

Opublikowano: 2026-10-08

A crew of weary explorers finally finds the world they’ve been searching for through years of interstellar decline — lush, fertile, and seemingly abandoned, except for a handful of ragged, violent survivors hiding in the ruins of a bombed-out city. As the scholar aboard finally deciphers what’s left of the dead civilization’s language, the story lands on a gut-punch final line that’s stuck with readers for decades. William J. Brittain remains one of classic science fiction’s great mysteries — he published only three short stories in the 1940s, with “The Burnt Planet” appearing in the Winter 1948...