Robert Silverberg 8 min read

The last man on Earth barricades his room against the aliens, but the real question is what he's waiting for.

A reclusive ham-radio operator named Haverford believes he may be the only human left alive after the mysterious Lanthaii broadcast their warning and descended on the planet. Sealed in his one-room flat, listening to a world gone silent, he keeps watch for invaders who could break through at any moment. Silverberg, writing at the peak of the pulp era, takes a familiar siege premise and threads it with dread and loneliness, building toward a sly turn on what "invasion" really means. A taut, atmospheric short from one of the genre's most prolific craftsmen. Read it for a claustrophobic slice of 1950s paranoia, expertly wound.

In its time

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

Reading it

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