Margaret St. Clair 20 min read

'The ingratitude of humans is amazing,' broods McBream, fish a terrestrial out of the water and he sends you the tailor's bill. And now there's the matter of an extra-terrestrial cookbook.

Margaret St. Clair's 1952 story spins a wry first-contact and social-SF comedy from grumbling spacers and alien manners. Clever, funny golden-age SF. Read it for a genial tale of interplanetary passengers, human ingratitude, and a very unusual encyclopedia of alien cookery.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

W. E. Terry