Joseph Samachson 12 min read

Half of Jupiter's disk and most of its moons hang below the horizon when the man steps off the plane and changes Carol Marsh's life, ordinary-looking enough, though she isn't drawn to ordinary men.

Joseph Samachson's 1955 story is a warm first-contact and space-opera tale of a stranger with a secret. Clever, engaging golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a seemingly unremarkable newcomer to a Jovian-moon outpost turns out to be far more lost, and far more spoken for, than anyone can guess.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller