“The photon storm struck without warning.”
I read a lot of scifi anthologies as a teenager (more on that later) and some of the stories in them have stayed with me all my life, even though I had forgotten the names of the authors and the stories (more on that later, too). So when I came across ‘Specialist’ again, I was very happy indeed. A vintage science fiction story about co-operation and hope, it’s just gorgeous.
First published in 1953 and collected in Untouched by Human Hands, Ballantine, 1954; reprinted by Penguin in 2021. Widely collected and anthologised, including in The Golden Age of Science Fiction, edited by Kingsley Amis, Hutchinson, 1981
A Personal Anthology 