Irving E. Cox 32 min read

They were languorous, anarchic, shameless in their pleasures, but were they lower than man, or higher? A rigidly righteous teacher demands the trade agent act when a native boy vanishes.

Irving E. Cox's 1953 story sets a sharp first-contact and colonization tale against a clash of human and alien values. Thoughtful, provocative golden-age SF. Read it for a story that questions who is really the more advanced when Earthly rectitude meets a freer way of life.

In its time

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

Reading it

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