Patrick Fahy 8 min read

The aliens are gone, only a few shining metal huts in the Siberian tundra proving it wasn't a nightmare, and Earth stood helpless before them, no more able to resist than a child against an ogre.

Patrick Fahy's 1961 story is a sharp post-apocalyptic and social-SF tale of the aftermath of invasion. Clever, ironic golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a humbled humanity, having narrowly survived overwhelming alien conquerors, confronts what it has become, and the ironic key that finally saved the Earth.

In its time

Published in 1961, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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