Alan Edward Nourse 31 min read

Scientists argued whether Venus was jungle, desert, or ocean, but when the first Earth ship finally landed, all it found was mud: warm, wet, soggy mud, enough to circle the planet twice.

Alan E. Nourse's 1957 story is a wry, clever colonization and first-contact tale. Sharp, funny golden-age SF. Read it for a genial story where humanity's grand expectations of Venus dissolve into endless mud, and the muddy natives prove far more than the frustrated colonists first assume.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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