Anderson Horne 17 min read

'Transmission gets impossible around dusk in a sun-spot year,' Bill assures his young wife, their boat limping toward Nassau on water-fouled fuel, she only wants the news about the new satellite.

Anderson Horne's 1959 story is a wry first-contact and social-SF tale that opens on an ordinary boating mishap. Sharp, genial golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a couple stranded at sea with a balky radio become unlikely witnesses to something far larger, on the day of the dog.

In its time

Published in 1959, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller