Roger D. Aycock 28 min read

Fleeing toward the crater wall through scented, pearly mist, Farrell is warned that someone is coming, but nothing matters now in his warm euphoric glow, secure in his new-found paradise.

Roger D. Aycock's 1954 story is an eerie colonization and first-contact tale of a seductive, mind-fogging alien world. Atmospheric, unsettling golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a man's blissful sense of paradise conceals a trap he's too contented to recognize.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Dick Francis