V. R. Francis 19 min read

In the fiscal year 2056, Hotlips Grogan is the gonest trumpet-tooter this side of Alpha Centauri, until one night he's playing strictly in three or four wrong keys, and something is clearly amiss.

V. R. Francis's 1957 story is a breezy, comic first-contact and social-SF tale told in hip jazz slang. Fun, genial golden-age SF. Read it for a jazzy, tongue-in-cheek story where a spacefaring hepcat band and a lovestruck trumpet player collide with the strange, told in the cool patter of the far-future bandstand.

In its time

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

Reading it

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