Annie Proulx 12 min read

Over lukewarm kasser in the inspectors' lounge, old Grag tells for the eightieth time how, as a young officer, he refused to pass a pair of Venusers and their little box of another-world sweets.

Annie Proulx's 1963 story is a wry, genial first-contact and social-SF tale, a very early work by the future Pulitzer-winning novelist. Charming, clever golden-age SF. Read it for a rare curiosity: young Annie Proulx spinning a warm bureaucratic yarn of interplanetary customs officers and the strange contraband they catch.

In its time

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

Reading it

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