Larry T. Shaw 25 min read

John Andrew Farmer scowls at the octopus sprawled on his living-room couch, rubs his stubbly jaw, and says, 'I love you', nine clawed tentacles and all, a most uncomfortable, unrequited passion.

Larry T. Shaw's 1957 story is a wry, inventive first-contact and social-SF comedy. Funny, clever golden-age SF. Read it for a genial oddball tale where a perpetually uncomfortable man falls hopelessly in love with a tentacled alien, and the course of true love runs stranger than usual.

In its time

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

Reading it

25 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).