Stephen Marlowe 22 min read

Eddie Amhurst watches his scissors climb off the dresser and march across the empty air of the bedroom toward him, snip, snip, then march back and lie down again.

Stephen Marlowe's 1953 story opens on a marvelously eerie image before its time-travel premise unfolds, as objects behave impossibly. Sharp, uncanny golden-age SF. Read it for a story that starts with self-propelled scissors and follows the strangeness all the way down.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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