Tom Godwin is the author of thirty short stories and three novels.

Crushing gravity. Thin air. Winters of unimaginable cold Searing summers under two suns. A deadly wasteland teeming with monsters and killing fever. That was Ragnarok, the most dreaded planet yet discovered. And Ragnarok was where a thousand untrained Earthmen -- and women and children -- were brutally marooned by a sadistic enemy.

Two hundred died the first night.

In the morning, the survivors knew what they must live for...revenge!

"A smile of friendship is a baring of the teeth. So is a snarl of menace. It can be fatal to mistake the latter for the former."

"Harm an alien being only under circumstances of self-defense."

TRUST NO ALIEN BEING UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

--From "Exploration Ship's Handbook"

The problem of separating the friends from the enemies was a major one in the conquest of space, as many a dead spacer could have testified. A tough job when you could see an alien and judge appearances; far tougher when they were only whispers on the wind.

The science fiction novel by author Tom Godwin was first published in 1958 under the title The Survivors. It was later published in 1960 under the title Space Prison. The novel is an expansion of Godwin's story "Too Soon to Die" which first appeared in the magazine Venture. A ship heading from Earth to Athena, a planet 500 light years away, is suddenly attacked by the Gerns, an alien empire in its expansion phase. People aboard are divided by the invaders into Acceptables and Rejects. The Acceptables would become slave labor for the Gerns on Athena, and the Rejects are forced ashore on the nearest 'Earth-like' planet, called Ragnarok. The Gerns say they will return for the Rejects, but the Rejects quickly realise that that isn't going to happen...

Tom Godwin was a 20th century science fiction writer. His childhood was full of family tragedies. Godwin's novel Space Prison was first published under the name The Survivors. The climate was freezing cold in the winter and the two suns made it broiling hot in the summer. Monsters roamed the landscape and fever was prevalent. A brutal enemy marooned men, women and children from Earth on Ragnarok the most feared inhabitable planet known to man. Several hundred died from exposure that first night and in the morning the rest of the humans knew that they lived only for revenge.

AFTER TWO CENTURIES....The sound came swiftly nearer, rising in pitch and swelling in volume. Then it broke through the clouds, tall and black and beautifully deadly-the Gern battle cruiser, come to seek them out and destroy them. Humbolt dropped inside the stockade, exulting. For two hundred years his people had been waiting for the chance to fight the mighty Gern Empire ..... with bows and arrows against blasters and bombs!