James McKimmey 7 min read

The lean, leather-faced farmer simply refuses to work, and won't say why beyond 'good reasons', while his worried wife circles the kitchen in quick, birdlike steps, warning they'll starve.

James McKimmey's 1959 story builds a sharp first-contact and social-SF tale from one man's quiet, stubborn defiance. Sharp, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a farmer's inexplicable strike opens onto something far larger than a family quarrel.

In its time

Published in 1959, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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