Frank Belknap Long 26 min read

Shantyboat boy Jimmy has a wild talent for cadging things from riverboat captains, and a genius for pantomime, as he watches the Natchez Belle steam near, heart knocking against his ribs.

Frank Belknap Long's 1951 story is an atmospheric first-contact and horror tale of the great river. Vivid, evocative golden-age SF. Read it for a moody story steeped in the world of the Mississippi shantyboats, where a scavenging boy's greatest find drifts down out of the sky, and the wonder of it shades toward dread.

In its time

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

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Jon Arfstrom