Allen Kim Lang 12 min read

'I'm only here to help you,' says the man from Mars, who in six weeks has wiped out rabies, measles, and the common cold, and now proposes something the Secretary calls blasphemous.

Allen Kim Lang's 1951 story sets a benevolent, all-capable alien against human resistance to his ultimate remedy. Sharp, provocative first-contact SF. Read it for a pointed tale about a helper whose cures are miraculous, and whose final proposal humanity may not be able to accept.

In its time

Published in 1951, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Paul Orban