Margaret St. Clair 11 min read

The Free'l's grand spell should have drawn the moon from the sky, but they used broor's blood instead of newt's, alganon instead of vervet juice, and were three days late, so nothing happened.

Margaret St. Clair's 1960 story is a droll fantasy and social-SF comedy of hopeless would-be wizards. Funny, whimsical golden-age SF. Read it for a genial tale where an exasperated missionary of magic struggles to teach a sloppy, well-meaning people to cast a spell properly, with delightful results.

In its time

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

Reading it

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