Sydney J. Van Scyoc 22 min read

There stands Bass McDowall, life-size on the Wall, bending over Kippie's girl-image, and Amanda, sick with hatred, thrusts the lever up and makes the beloved family idols lurch and vanish.

Sydney J. Van Scyoc's 1962 story is a sharp first-contact and social-SF tale of media obsession in the home. Clever, unsettling golden-age SF. Read it for an early story by a fine writer, where a family's all-consuming devotion to the images on their Wall conceals a stranger, deeper truth.

In its time

Published in 1962, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

West