David Mason 6 min read

The alien ship sits squarely on the main runway, snarling all air traffic, and its owner V'gu blandly ignores every polite request to move it, while making notes on Terran marriage rites.

David Mason's 1958 story mines deadpan comedy and unease from an immovable, possibly bomb-armed visitor. Wry, sharp first-contact SF. Read it for a droll tale about an alien anthropologist who simply will not get his battle-cruiser off the tarmac.

In its time

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

Reading it

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