Magnus Ludens 5 min read

'Let's go slumming,' says Powers-of-pearl. 'Let's give an earthman his wish for a day.' And so commuter Peter Stone, worn down to a twitch, is picked out for a strange kind of game.

Magnus Ludens's 1962 story is a wry, wistful first-contact and social-SF tale. Clever, humane golden-age SF. Read it for a genial story where bored, godlike aliens grant a harried commuter a day of every wish, and the long, silvery day proves both a gift and a revelation.

In its time

Published in 1962, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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