Founding Father (short story)
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Founding Father is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the August 1965 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. It was inspired by a cover painting of a space-helmeted face backed by several crosses, provided by the magazine's editor, Frederick Pohl.
A exploratory spaceship of the Galactic Corps crash-lands on an alien planet. The soil is heavy on ammonia and the atmosphere unbreathable by humans. As they are unable to take off again, the crew spend their time trying to adjust the environment to become suitable for human colonists. Although they spend many years at this task, they fail and one by one, they die of ammonia poisoning. As the last man dies, the flesh of the buried crew reacts with the soil, providing the catalyst that alters the environment to become more Earth-like.
