Fredric Brown 23 min read

Stuck a month on an asteroid with four other men and nothing to do but talk, a work crew swaps a very strange story indeed.

Fredric Brown's 1944 story captures the boredom of asteroid mining, no books, no games, only conversation, and threads through it a wild yarn of alien encounter. Brown's trademark wit and twist make the most of the confined setting. Read it for sharp, funny golden-age SF from a master of the clever ending.

In its time

Published in 1944, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ronald Clyne