Rog Phillips 27 min read

Deep in the fourth draft of his doctorate thesis, four days from deadline, Arthur gets Aunt Matilda's terse telegram: come at once, in terrible trouble, do not phone, at the worst possible time.

Rog Phillips's 1958 story is an eerie fantasy and psi-powers tale of a strange homecoming. Sharp, unsettling golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a young man's grudging answer to a desperate summons leads him back to a hometown that suddenly, inexplicably, wants nothing to do with him.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

27 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Llewellyn