Mark Clifton 21 min read

'Leave well enough alone' is the moral, if this story has one, just look what happened to Kenzie 'mad-about-ants' MacKenzie, an amiable young scientist forever dreaming, not of his gal, but of ants.

Mark Clifton's 1953 story is a wry, cautionary first-contact and social-SF tale. Clever, funny golden-age SF. Read it for a genial story where an absent-minded scientist's obsession with ants leads him meddling where he shouldn't, with consequences that prove the old advice about leaving well enough alone.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Kelly Freas