Kendell Foster Crossen 1 hr 7 min read

In gloomy 1952, footloose Kevan MacGreene broods over atomic warfare, the cost of living, and Congress knee-deep in peanuts, the sour prelude to a comic first-contact adventure.

Kendell Foster Crossen's 1952 story is a wry, satirical first-contact and social-SF comedy. Fun, clever golden-age SF. Read it for a genial romp that sets a discontented young man loose in a world of Cold War absurdities, in a witty golden-age piece whose punning title hints at the gnomes, geology, and good-humored nonsense to come.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

1 hr 7 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Alex Schomburg