F. L. Wallace 43 min read

Alone in an empty park ringed by tiers of traffic, Richel Alsint sits motionless, coaxing a wary furry animal toward a kernel, while a strange blue bird balances effortlessly overhead.

F. L. Wallace's 1959 story opens on a quiet, alien-tinged idyll before its first-contact and colonization premise unfolds. Sharp, well-observed golden-age SF. Read it for a story that begins in a moment of gentle stillness and grows toward something much larger.

In its time

Published in 1959, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

43 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).