George O. Smith 19 min read

A Boston bar riot turns strange when the brawler who won't take his hat off turns out to have feathers where his hair should be.

George O. Smith's 1946 story sets a hard-boiled police lieutenant on the trail of a huge stranger causing chaos on Boylston Street, a visitor whose plumed head marks him as something other than human. Wry, streetwise first-contact SF with a cop's-eye voice. Read it for a fun, down-to-earth golden-age take on an alien loose in an ordinary city.

In its time

Published in 1946, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

19 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

Swenson