Henry Slesar 45 min read

A star pilot wakes to find his legs too short to reach the floor and his skilled hands weak and clumsy, and a giant woman-face soothing his screams.

Henry Slesar's 1957 story traps Ron Carver in a nightmare that won't end, his adult mind wrong in a body that isn't his. Disturbing, well-turned psi-era SF about identity and helplessness. Read it for an unsettling golden-age tale that opens inside a waking horror.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Paul Orban