Jerome Bixby 7 min read

In the shadow of a crater on Phobos, the priests Grg and Yrl, trembling in every tentacle, wait to greet the God descending from the sky, at the spot where it must land.

Jerome Bixby's 1963 story is a wry, comic first-contact tale told from the aliens' side. Clever, funny golden-age SF. Read it for a genial story where devout Martian-moon priests await a divine visitor from Earth, with a droll warning to astronauts about being careful, on arrival, what you look like.

In its time

Published in 1963, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Bruno