Katherine MacLean 4 min read

'Stick close by me, child,' the old one tells the frightened youngster. 'Dark, very dark, and big, it sucks heat and absorbs light. Don't take in too much, or you'll be overcharged.'

Katherine MacLean's 1953 story is an inventive first-contact tale told from an utterly alien viewpoint. Clever, imaginative golden-age SF. Read it for a story that renders a wholly non-human form of life, energy-feeding beings for whom a human spaceship is a strange and dangerous thing to follow.

In its time

Published in 1953, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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