Dick Hetschel 8 min read

A perfectly conventional field trip, once around the Milky Way with stops at the major stars, back for supper in about eighty-eight million years, goes awry when two students wander off.

Dick Hetschel's 1952 story spins whimsical cosmic comedy from godlike students playing with a galaxy. Playful, inventive first-contact space opera. Read it for a delightful tale where a schoolroom excursion among the stars has unexpected, and rather large, consequences.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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