Tom Godwin 22 min read

The Exploration Ship's Handbook says trust no alien under any circumstances, but a smile and a snarl both bare the teeth, and one man listens to an ominous silence.

Tom Godwin's 1958 story (by the author of 'The Cold Equations') builds a tense first-contact puzzle around the deadly difficulty of reading alien intent, framed by the handbook's grim warnings. Sharp, thoughtful golden-age SF. Read it for a taut tale about the fatal ambiguity of signals from another world.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Martinez