Charles E. Fritch 15 min read

Like a lone sentinel, a white windowless house stands at the edge of a silent village, its door a dark hole, and three Earthmen wonder whether anyone lives on this alien world at all.

Charles E. Fritch's 1955 story is a tense colonization and social-SF tale. Sharp, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a story where explorers on a silent planet confront a people whose ways are utterly strange, and the peaceful surface of the pacifists conceals an unsettling truth.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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