James V. McConnell 19 min read

'I am writing this because I presume He wants me to.' Snatched from a woodland walk into a small, featureless room, naked and baffled, a man tries to reason his way through his captivity.

James V. McConnell's 1957 story flips first contact around, making a human the specimen in an alien experiment. Sharp, witty, clever golden-age SF. Read it for a delicious tale in which the captive tries psychology on his unseen captor, with the tables turned on humanity.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Virgil Finlay