Jerome Bixby 30 min read

A jet bomber and four fighters sweep low over Smoky Creek, Tennessee (population 123), broad Slavic faces peering down through plexiglass, then take altitude and get to work on the little town.

Jerome Bixby's 1955 story is a sharp, chilling post-apocalyptic and first-contact tale of war come to small-town America. Sharp, resonant golden-age SF. Read it for a story that meets an attack on an ordinary American town with a memorable and unexpected turn.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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