Frank Herbert 15 min read

On his last night on Earth, expectant father and accountant Ted Graham steps from a phone booth to meet his pregnant wife, the two of them house-hunting for a place that's hard to find at night.

Frank Herbert's 1958 story is a sharp, eerie first-contact and colonization tale hidden in a house-hunt. Clever, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a story where an ordinary couple's search for a home leads them somewhere no realtor ever advertised.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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