F. L. Wallace 50 min read

The customs official can hardly believe the passport: a planet actually named 'Messy Row.' But the Mezzerows have bigger troubles than a laughable homeworld.

F. L. Wallace's 1956 story spins wry first-contact and social-SF comedy from an ill-named planet and its put-upon natives. Clever, funny golden-age SF. Read it for a genial tale where a joke of a place-name is only the surface of a much stranger story.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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