Katherine MacLean 14 min read

Ronny is playing by himself, two tribes of Indians at war, arrows going wizzthunk, when his private make-believe starts to blur unnervingly into something far more real.

Katherine MacLean's 1953 story is a small, chilling classic of psi and childhood, where a boy's games open onto another mind. Sharp, unsettling, superbly crafted golden-age SF. Read it for a quietly disturbing masterpiece about the porous border between imagination and reality.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

William Ashman