Henry Slesar 6 min read

Speeding through the ionosphere of a green planet, the airy alien Laloi ignores her companion's scolding and flings her incorporeal substance rapturously through a clump of daffodils.

Henry Slesar's 1957 story is a whimsical hard-SF and social-SF tale of beings of living air. Charming, imaginative golden-age SF. Read it for a lyrical story of ethereal aliens delighting in Earth's flowers, and the reluctant genius among them.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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