The Survivors

We rely on your support to help us keep producing beautiful, free, and unrestricted editions of literature for the digital age. Will you support our efforts with a donation ? The spaceship Constellation , taking colonists to the world of Athena, is suddenly attacked and boarded by the Gerns—an alien race which has just declared war against humanity. The Gerns take the colonists to Ragnarok, a planet in a double-star system, which was previously surveyed as uninhabitable owing to its high gravity, extreme seasonal cycles, and threatening local fauna. The Gerns leave their hostages stranded, expecting them to succumb to the planet's harsh conditions. The humans, meanwhile, seek to survive against all odds in the hopes of one day exacting revenge. In 1957 Tom Godwin wrote the novelette "Too Soon to Die," which he later expanded into a novel published in 1958 by Gnome Press as The Survivors . In 1960 it was reprinted by Pyramid Books under the title Space Prison . Tom Godwin was a significant literary figure whose work has stood the test of time. This public domain edition preserves the original text in its entirety, making it accessible to modern readers and scholars alike. The early science fiction genre, pioneered by visionaries like H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, laid the groundwork for one of literature's most enduring and imaginative forms. The Survivors stands as an early example of speculative fiction grappling with the promises and perils of science and technology.