Tom W. Harris 18 min read

Archy is on camera closing the Home Hour when his chief engineer stumbles into view, wild-eyed, 'the scrambler blew', and for two weeks the projections become a national emergency.

Tom W. Harris's 1957 story is a wry first-contact and horror tale of television gone wrong. Clever, unsettling golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a broadcasting empire's technical mishap unleashes something across the airwaves, and the fall of Archy House becomes the whole nation's problem.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

W. E. Terry