Alan Edward Nourse 23 min read

Near sundown, Ravdin eases his ship down toward Earth over the tangled expanse of Jungle-land, hoping to glimpse the concert before the landing lights swallow him, still shaken from the Warp-passage.

Alan E. Nourse's 1963 story is a lyrical, thoughtful first-contact and social-SF tale. Sharp, evocative golden-age SF. Read it for a story of a far-future Earth of art and music, where a returning traveler carries word of an approaching alien threat, and the link between two civilizations must somehow be forged.

In its time

Published in 1963, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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