Fritz Leiber 21 min read

A blocked artist on a desert vacation wanders into a valley of red stones, and, without quite knowing it, may or may not step sideways into another world entirely.

Fritz Leiber's 1951 story is a subtle, disorienting alternate-history and social-SF tale of a slip between realities. Clever, dreamlike golden-age SF. Read it for a wry story where a frustrated painter stumbles into a strange alternate society, unsure he's even had an adventure at all.

In its time

Published in 1951, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Philip Bard