Sterling E. Lanier 15 min read

Surveying yet another nondescript island on yet another catalogued world, Commander Powers hasn't bothered to learn the natives' name for anything, the Falsethsa are just Planet Two's problem.

Sterling E. Lanier's 1961 story is a sharp first-contact and social-SF tale of a jaded survey officer and a deceptively simple world. Clever, wry golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a weary explorer's contempt for a 'primitive' race sets up a very pointed reversal.

In its time

Published in 1961, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Douglas