Robert F. Young 18 min read

Turning down a side road toward Sugardale to write up a fallen star, Dexter Foote slams on the brakes, his new convertible bound, though he can't yet know it, for a fate worse than death.

Robert F. Young's 1963 story is a wry first-contact and social-SF comedy. Funny, clever golden-age SF. Read it for a genial story where aliens prove altogether too impressed by Earth's technical marvels, they find them just delicious, and a hapless reporter gets caught in the middle.

In its time

Published in 1963, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Norman Nodel