Herbert D. Kastle 18 min read

There's the usual welcoming crowd and the usual politicians' speeches, but the mayor's handclasp is moist and cold, his eyes remote, for the first man back from Mars is greeted not quite as a hero.

Herbert D. Kastle's 1961 story is a sharp, unsettling first-contact and social-SF tale. Clever, chilling golden-age SF. Read it for a story where humanity's returning pioneer finds himself received with unease rather than acclaim, and the reason cuts to something deeply strange about what the journey has done to him.

In its time

Published in 1961, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

H. R. Van Dongen