Basil Wells 7 min read

Beyond her false windows lies a reddish wasteland of slow-drifting dust, but fourteen-year-old Ruth Halsey, pretty and dreaming of her favorite date, believes she lives in an ordinary summer world.

Basil Wells's 1953 story builds a quietly unsettling social-SF and time-travel tale from a girl's comfortable illusion. Sharp, poignant golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a teenager's cozy reality conceals a truth about the desolate world outside her windows.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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