Thomas M. Disch 5 min read

There is intelligent life on Earth, and, incredible as the square root of minus one, the Terrans are slaves, ruled by captors that do not possess the properties of life as the galaxy knows it.

Thomas M. Disch's 1963 story is a sharp, ironic first-contact and social-SF tale. Clever, unsettling golden-age SF (early Disch). Read it for a story told from an alien survey team's baffled point of view, as they conclude that thriving humanity is enslaved by something they cannot recognize as alive.

In its time

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

Reading it

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