Charles L. Fontenay 5 min read

The first two expeditions to Mars found no Martians. The third did, and the wonder is less that they exist than that anyone found them.

Charles L. Fontenay's 1956 story sends Von Frisch, Riley, and Smith to a nervous meeting with a half-dozen of the planet's few surviving natives, twenty miles from safety. Tense, thoughtful first-contact SF about the old problem of talking to Martians. Read it for a well-turned golden-age tale about the hard business of communication across the species gap.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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