Evelyn E. Smith 49 min read

To afford to live belowground, Snaddra must underhandedly pretend theirs is an aboveboard society, so Skkiru, the high priestess's suitor, is cast as a lowly beggar for the visiting Earthmen.

Evelyn E. Smith's 1957 story is a witty first-contact and social-SF comedy. Clever, funny golden-age SF. Read it for a genial farce where an alien world stages an elaborate fake 'primitive' culture to impress Earth's anthropologists, and one heartbroken young beggar rebels against the charade.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Diane Dillon