John Bernard Daley 22 min read

At the zoo, Mr. Kemper leans on the rail watching the caged lions, for to Kemper, it is people who are the lower animals, and the beasts he admires who deserve respect.

John Bernard Daley's 1956 story is a sharp first-contact and social-SF tale. Clever, unsettling golden-age SF. Read it for a story that quietly inverts our view of humans and beasts, following a strange man whose sympathies lie entirely with the caged animals, in a well-turned golden-age piece with a chilling perspective and a sting in the tail.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Paul Orban