Con Pederson 31 min read

Sethos enters the park at twilight as the last children fade into the dusk, and finds Ela waiting for him, a quiet meeting in a leaf-strewn park, on an evening that will not stay ordinary.

Con Pederson's 1954 story is a thoughtful hard-SF and social-SF tale. Sharp, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a quietly building story where an ordinary evening among artists and lovers frames a question of genius and creation, told with an eye for mood and understatement.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Paul Orban