Irving E. Cox 20 min read

Hidden in the brush, naked and unarmed by order of the computers, a Fleet Lieutenant studies three grotesque hairless bipeds, the barely rational dominant species of this primitive world.

Irving E. Cox's 1955 story flips the lens, viewing humanity as ugly aliens through a scout's wary eyes. Sharp, ironic first-contact colonization SF. Read it for a clever tale that makes us the strange, dangerous creatures being sized up for the taking.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

W. E. Terry