Dean Evans 21 min read

In 1982, dark old gold-miner Tom Gannett climbs from his shaft, squints up at a sky gone strangely queer, and growls at a sun that looks sicker than a dog. This could be a Christmas story.

Dean Evans's 1951 story spins a first-contact and social-SF tale with a hopeful holiday twist. Warm, wry golden-age SF. Read it for a genial story where a lone miner witnesses something strange in the heavens, and finds one way peace on Earth might come.

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

David Stone