Randall Garrett 32 min read

Peter de Hooch wakes from dreaming the moon had blown up, sitting in the dark by his glowing night-light, sure something woke him but unable to find any sign of what it was.

Randall Garrett's 1962 story is a sharp hard-SF and social-SF tale framed by an old nursery rhyme. Clever, tense golden-age SF. Read it for a story where, like the man who jumped into the bramble bush, a desperate remedy for one disaster threatens to scratch out the eyes of those who attempt it.

In its time

Published in 1962, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

George Schelling