Hal Annas 25 min read

At the press of a velvet button, Len Zitts's couch reshapes into a chair while mechanical arms shoe him, button his collar, and comb his hair, as a blonde stands agape in the doorway.

Hal Annas's 1951 story is a wry, comic first-contact and social-SF tale. Fun, genial golden-age SF. Read it for a breezy story of an over-automated future and the strange 'Longsnozzle Event,' told with tongue firmly in cheek and a pretty woman at the center of the trouble.

In its time

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

Reading it

25 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Robert Fuqua