The Buttoned Sky

In Short

Set in a far-future Earth brought low by alien conquerors, The Buttoned Sky follows Revel, an oppressed coal miner of the lowest social class—the "ruck." Governed by tyrannical "gentry" squires, treacherous priests, and floating golden "god-globes," humanity has forgotten its past. When Revel accidentally kills one of the orb-like deities, he learns they are mortal. Joining forces with a underground rebel, an abducted highborn lady, and a time-displaced visitor from Earth's lost civilization, Revel leads a bloody, pickax-wielding uprising. The novella endures as a fast-paced, unpretentious action yarn that merges classic planetary romance with post-apocalyptic rebellion.

The Story

In the dark mists of Dolfya Town, Revel lives the brutal life of the ruck—the faceless, rightless working class who toil in coal shafts to serve the gentry and appease the god-globes. His morning begins in squalor, cleaning a fouled well and tending to his crippled mother. Deep in the coal mine, after a tense dispute with his brother Rack, Revel and a enigmatic small miner named Jerran are ambushed by a hovering golden orb. Defending himself, Revel strikes it with his pickax. To his shock, the "god" punctures like a rubber bag and dies, spilling yellow gore.

Jerran reveals himself as part of an underground resistance and urges Revel to hide the body in a secret cavern. Soon after, the Lady Nirea—the proud, silver-gowned daughter of the oppressive Squire Ewyo—is thrown into the mine shaft when her horse bolts. Revel and Jerran capture her to protect their secret, retreating into an ancient vault filled with mysterious artifacts from forgotten times. When Ewyo's huntsmen and priest attempt to breach the cavern, Revel slays a hideous, six-legged, snake-headed beast called a zanph using a scavenged gun, signaling an open declaration of war against the ruling order.

Fleeing through thorn thickets while dragging Nirea along, Revel earns her reluctant respect. The gentry retaliate with catastrophic force, leveling an entire square mile of Dolfya and killing thousands—including Revel's mother. Now an outlaw celebrated in rebel folk ballads as "The Mink," Revel attends a secret night assembly of seven hundred miners. Though his brother Rack briefly betrays him to curry favor with the gentry, Revel survives a lion attack in the woods and returns to fight.

Captured and forced to run a murderous gauntlet as a hunted "fox" for the sport of the mounted squires, Revel turns the tables through sheer ferocity, killing his pursuers with iron daggers and stolen guns. Rejoined by Nirea—who has abandoned her nobility, claimed the title "Lady of the Mink," and stolen ancient ledgers from her father—the rebels uncover John Klapham, a man transported from Earth's ancient past. John explains that the "gods" are merely extraterrestrial invaders who arrived in saucer-like "buttons," reducing humanity to a synthetic 18th-century feudalism run by traitorous squires and sycophantic priests.

Armed with John's technical knowledge and an ancient beam weapon, Revel raises an army of six hundred miners. They storm the valleys, slaughtering scores of globes and zanphs with heavy picks. Overwhelmed by the brutal uprising, the remaining alien globes flee Earth in thousands of saucer-craft, taking seven thousand squires with them into space. The surviving priests are forced into the mines to labor as commoners, leaving Revel, Nirea, and their allies to rebuild a free human civilization.

How It Unfolds

The god falls Working deep in the coal shafts of Dolfya Town, Revel strikes a hovering yellow orb with his pickax to protect a fellow miner. The fragile entity bursts, exposing the physical mortality of the world's worshipped rulers.

Escape into the ancient vault Revel and the rebel Jerran haul the abducted Lady Nirea into a hidden cavern filled with giant relics of a lost civilization. When Squire Ewyo's men and a six-legged zanph attack the entrance, Revel shoots the beast, sealing his fate as a hunted rebel.

The gauntlet of the gentry Stripped of his rights, Revel is forced into the traditional squire hunt, given a brief head start to run down a narrow valley while mounted nobles and hounds pursue him. Using two short iron daggers and desperate combat tactics, he kills his pursuers and survives the lethal game.

The ancient visitor The rebels join forces with John Klapham, a man displaced from Earth's glorious past, and read stolen books brought by Nirea. John identifies the golden globes as alien conquerors and helps the miners understand the true history of their subjugation.

The valley assault Revel gathers six hundred armed miners and launches a brutal, systematic assault on the alien flying saucers resting in the valley. Flailing his pickax through swarms of zanphs and floating Orbs, he clears the way for John to operate a restored beam weapon.

The sky clears Defeated by the miner army, thousands of alien flying "buttons" launch into space, carrying the fleeing gentry away with them. The priests are stripped of their authority, and Revel's victory fulfills the ballad of the Mink.

The People

• Revel (The Mink): A twenty-eight-year-old coal miner of the ruck who possesses immense physical strength and quick reflexes. Initially wanting only to survive his harsh routine, his accidental destruction of an alien orb transforms him into a ruthless, pick-swinging revolutionary leader. He evolves from a desperate fugitive into the unifying hero of humanity.
• Lady Nirea: The proud daughter of Squire Ewyo who begins the story in silver gowns and haughty contempt for the lower classes. After being kidnapped into the mines, surviving bramble escapes, and witnessing the brutal reality of her father's rule, she discards her aristocratic privilege, steals her family's historical ledgers, and proudly adopts the title "Lady of the Mink."
• Jerran: A small, yellow-faced miner who harbors a sharp mind and deep ties to the secret rebel movement. He understands the physical limitations of the "gods" long before others, acting as Revel's strategic guide and loyal companion throughout the uprising.
• John Klapham: A visitor from the "Ancient Kingdom" (pre-collapse Earth) who speaks in strange twentieth-century slang and smokes tobacco. His presence provides the critical scientific understanding needed to reframe the supernatural "gods" as alien invaders and operate the ancient machinery required to drive them off.
• Rack: Revel's giant, red-bearded brother who initially reposes his faith in the established feudal order. Out of fear and desire for safety, he temporarily turns against Revel to return Nirea to the squires, but eventually recognizes the gentry's cruelty and joins the miner rebellion.

In Its Own Voice

The sheer physical misery of the lower class opens the narrative:

"The bed was a hollowed place in the earth floor, filled with leaves and dried grass and spread with yellow-brown mink skins sewn into a big blanket; he'd slept on it every night of his twenty-eight years, but this morning it felt hard and uncomfortable."

The alien nature of the world's oppressive rulers is described during a mine descent:

"Under it trotted a zanph, one of the ugly beasts, six-legged and furry with the head of a great snake, that followed the globes and sometimes attacked men on orders from the hovering gods."

John Klapham bluntly dismantles the supernatural myths maintaining the feudal order:

"Listen, Mink, those are not gods! They're things from the stars, from out there beyond the world!"

What It's Really About

At its core, The Buttoned Sky examines how tyranny relies on manufactured myth and enforced ignorance. The alien globes do not rule through raw physical invincibility—they are fragile entities easily punctured by a common tool—but through a constructed religion enforced by traitorous human elites. The squires adopt an artificial 18th-century aristocracy to justify their cruelty, while the priests keep the working masses illiterate and fearful. The story argues that freedom requires both physical resistance and the reclamation of historical truth; once the ruck realizes their "gods" can bleed and their history was stolen, the entire structure of oppression collapses in a single day.

Why Read It Today

The Buttoned Sky is a lean, energetic example of mid-century pulp science fiction originally published in Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy in 1953. Readers who enjoy action-forward "sword and planet" yarns or post-apocalyptic rebellions will appreciate its rapid pacing, inventive mix of sci-fi tropes, and rugged protagonist. Krepps frames the narrative with verses from "Ruck's Ballad of the Mink," giving the adventure an intriguing folk-legend quality.

Modern readers should expect the standard conventions of 1950s pulp magazine fiction: characterizations are broad, plot developments move at breakneck speed, and romantic subplots unfold almost instantaneously amidst heavy action. The narrative features violent encounters, period dialect, and class-based brutality. However, the story remains highly readable thanks to its colorful visual imagination—contrasting glowing alien orbs and six-legged beasts against coal dust, pickaxes, and powdered wigs—and its satisfying, unpretentious tale of total liberation.