Henry Kuttner 22 min read

That man beside you may be a Martian. They own our world, and only a few far-seeing men like Lyman know it.

Henry Kuttner's 1948 story, one of the paranoid-classic tales of hidden aliens, plays a nervy bar-room conversation for creeping dread and dark wit. Sharp, unsettling first-contact SF from a master. Read it for a chilling, funny story about the secret Martians who might be sitting right next to you.

In its time

Published in 1948, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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