Jerome Bixby 24 min read

A Senior Intendant and his wife frolic in the Great Canal of Mars, teaching a canal-caught creature the meaning of a dunking.

Jerome Bixby's 1950 story opens on watery horseplay in the Martian canals, its playful domestic scene setting up a space-opera adventure. Light, colorful golden-age SF with a vivid sense of a settled, watery Mars. Read it for breezy pulp adventure that starts with a laugh in the canal and heads for the stars.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Earl Mayan