Frank Herbert 34 min read

The Romantics said the eyes were windows of the soul, and a sharp alien xenologist can read a great deal in the look of an eye, if he must judge a whole new world.

Frank Herbert's 1959 story, an early work by the future author of 'Dune,' is a clever first-contact tale of reading an alien race. Sharp, thoughtful golden-age SF. Read it for early Herbert, a shrewd story about the delicate, dangerous art of understanding a strange new intelligence.

In its time

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

Reading it

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