Alfred Coppel 11 min read

The Triomed advances stealthily across the dark cell toward the sleeping figure in the corner, after its long, lonely voyage, the nearness of a host fills the alien scientist with eager anticipation.

Alfred Coppel's 1953 story is a tense first-contact and psi-powers tale of body-snatching. Sharp, unsettling golden-age SF. Read it for a story where an alien of a dying race steals secretly to Earth in search of a human host, and the invader of the title finds this warm, teeming world a paradise ripe for the taking.

In its time

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

Reading it

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