R. R. Winterbotham 8 min read

Mjly is Yljm's love life, she is his sisters, his mothers, himselves, and his ancestors, but poor old Yljm can never be a mother or a sister, only himself.

R. R. Winterbotham's 1940 story spins a wry, ingenious first-contact and social-SF tale from a wholly alien biology of love. Clever, charming golden-age SF. Read it for a genial story that imagines romance and reproduction utterly unlike our own, told with wit and heart.

In its time

Published in 1940, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Kelly Freas