Fritz Leiber 31 min read

Hatred of the Martians is being deliberately stoked, and Scatterday knows why. To fight the enslavement of humans, he must help the very Martians the mob is lynching, even at risk of the rope.

Fritz Leiber's 1950 story is a sharp first-contact and social-SF allegory of bigotry and manipulation. Pointed, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a story that turns anti-alien hatred into a mirror of prejudice, and a hero who defies the mob to do what's right.

In its time

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

Reading it

31 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Milton Luros