John Victor Peterson 20 min read

Snug in his parka against a brutal Wisconsin winter, a technician at the cryptic UNACMEA/WAGS installation, no egghead, he insists, is about to meet a very strange, very elusive brunette.

John Victor Peterson's 1958 story is a wry first-contact and social-SF tale. Clever, fun golden-age SF. Read it for a genial story set at a secret research installation, where a self-deprecating everyman narrator's pursuit of a mysterious woman opens onto something stranger, in a light, good-humored golden-age piece with a puzzle at its heart.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller