The First Spaceman: The Glory of Spaceflight—And the Terrible Price of Survival

The First Spaceman by Gene L. Henderson - Rogers was a hero . . if only he hadn't come back alive!

Gene L. Henderson was one of the many writers who helped fill the pages of the science fiction magazines during the late 1940s and 1950s. He didn’t publish a large number of stories, but the ones he did leave behind are remembered for their mix of fast-moving adventure, big ideas, and very human characters.

The First Spaceman is probably his best-known story published in 1954, which captures both the excitement and unease people felt at the beginning of the Space Age. Like a lot of his contemporaries, Henderson liked to explore where technology might take us and what that would mean for the future of humanity. Not much is known about his personal life, but his stories still carry the flavor of a time when science fiction was growing up from pulp entertainment into something larger.