Roger D. Aycock 11 min read

There's nothing special about the little man who comes into Larry's after-hours bar, except that none of the newsmen know him, and Larry is fighting to bring in the first-ever broadcast from Mars.

Roger D. Aycock's 1954 story is a wry first-contact and social-SF tale. Clever, genial golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a stranger crashes a newsmen's late-night party on the very night of the first Mars broadcast, and his mixed, resentful expression hides an out-of-this-world secret.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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