Richard McKenna 20 min read

The headline reads 'RUSS DOG REACHES MOON ALIVE', and across the street, four fur-coated women grimly hoist a hound up a courthouse flagpole, a strap wired to its hind leg.

Richard McKenna's 1959 story spins gentle, wry first-contact and social-SF whimsy from the space-race dog craze. Charming, offbeat golden-age SF. Read it for a delightfully odd story where small-town eccentricity meets the dawn of the space age.

In its time

Published in 1959, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller