Wilson Parks Griffith 5 min read

Travelers from Outer Space dig a corroded metal capsule from the moldering rock, a Twentieth-Century time capsule, buried bright with the hopes of a civilization sending itself into the future.

Wilson Parks Griffith's 1955 story frames its time-spanning tale around a Chicago time capsule and the alien visitors who finally open it. Poignant, clever golden-age SF. Read it for a story about what a lost civilization chose to say to whoever, or whatever, came next.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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