Sam Merwin 1 hr 23 min read

Zalen Lindsay stands on the rostrum of the huge new United Worlds auditorium and looks out at an ocean of eyeglasses, unspectacled himself, feeling like a man from Mars, which is exactly what he is.

Sam Merwin's 1954 story is a sharp first-contact and social-SF tale of interplanetary diplomacy. Clever, pointed golden-age SF. Read it for a story where the first Martian ambassador to a squabbling Earth congress must bridge the gulf between worlds, in a wry meditation on prejudice, politics, and seeing clearly.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

1 hr 23 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).

Illustrated by

Kelly Freas