Richard Wilson 32 min read

Two slitted green eyes loom up before him and he plunges into them at once, a sexless, indescribable thing newly arrived, naked through the dimension stratum, scurrying into the first refuge.

Richard Wilson's 1953 story is an inventive first-contact and social-SF tale told from a truly alien viewpoint. Clever, strange golden-age SF. Read it for a story that strains at the limits of language to render a wholly non-human invader, a spy, a fifth-columnist, a kamikaze, taking up its silent, hidden campaign against humankind.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

William Ashman