Joseph Samachson 29 min read

A woman wakes in absolute blackness, sure she should be dead, her first thought a stab of despair: now she won't even be plain, she'll be ugly.

Joseph Samachson's 1954 story surfaces its injured heroine into darkness, pain, and dawning dread in a strange place of alien care. A tender, disquieting first-contact tale that finds its power in intimate physical vulnerability. Read it for a quietly affecting golden-age story about a body remade by unknown hands.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Vidmer