T. D. Hamm 11 min read

The instructions are mandatory: no capture attempted alone, any sign of human life reported at once, and Guldran, an alien anthropologist, ponders the tracks a woman's feet left in the snow.

T. D. Hamm's 1951 story is a poignant post-apocalyptic and social-SF tale told from the aliens' side. Sharp, evocative golden-age SF. Read it for a story where visitors to a frozen, catastrophe-struck Earth hunt for the last surviving humans, and the last supper of the title carries a quiet, haunting weight.

In its time

Published in 1951, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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