Edgar Pangborn 53 min read

An inoffensive retired doctor's journal reveals he adopted a tiny winged visitor from the stars, the best pet a human could choose.

Edgar Pangborn's 1951 story, framed as an FBI file and a dead man's diary, tells with extraordinary tenderness of Dr. Bannerman and the small angelic being he raised. A gentle, luminous, deeply humane classic of first contact, widely beloved and often anthologized. Read it for one of the warmest and most quietly moving stories the genre has ever produced.

In its time

Published in 1951, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

David Stone