F. L. Wallace 40 min read

Humanity's family tree turns out to be so vast it gives every alien race an inferiority complex, until man starts to climb it.

F. L. Wallace's 1954 story pairs biologist Sam Halden with the ribbon-shaped alien Taphetta the Ribboneer, unspooling a galaxy-spanning mystery about human origins that no one wants to believe. Clever, expansive space opera with a big central idea. Read it for ambitious golden-age SF that makes humanity's ancestry the wonder of the galaxy.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller