James Blish 43 min read

An art scholar wanders into a shabby surrealist gallery, and into a painting that opens onto somewhere very real.

James Blish's 1948 story lures a doctoral candidate past the braggart simplicity of a musty improvised exhibition and into a strange encounter that bends time itself. Cool, intelligent early Blish, more interested in ideas and unease than action. Read it for a cerebral, atmospheric tale where modern art becomes a doorway to the impossible.

In its time

Published in 1948, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

43 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Donel