P. Schuyler Miller 18 min read

'The ability to profit by past experience separates the animal from the vegetable kingdom,' pronounces Professor Hobbs, a Victorian schoolmaster whose lesson the narrator will never forget.

P. Schuyler Miller's 1941 story is a clever, atmospheric first-contact and social-SF tale. Sharp, thoughtful golden-age SF. Read it for a story that opens in a fusty schoolroom and grows into something far stranger, as an old teacher's dry lecture on plants and animals proves grimly prophetic.

In its time

Published in 1941, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Michael Mirando