Miriam Allen De Ford 10 min read

On an April night in 1960, as crowds chase the running grunion by torchlight on a San Diego beach, only a few notice that something else is riding in on the waves.

Miriam Allen deFord's 1956 story is a wry first-contact and post-apocalyptic tale. Clever, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a story that opens on the strange spectacle of the spawning grunion and unfolds a quiet, unsettling arrival from elsewhere, riding ashore among the fish and the fishers.

In its time

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

Reading it

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