Adrien Coblentz 5 min read

Into a South Bend pub walks a gaunt, thick-brogued stranger with a manila envelope and the haunted look of a man who has barely survived some incredible catastrophe, and a very strange tale to tell.

Adrien Coblentz's 1960 story is a wry first-contact and social-SF tale. Fun, clever golden-age SF. Read it for a genial barroom yarn, framed by Irish banter, where a shaken stranger unfolds an account of catastrophe and the uncanny, in a light, characterful golden-age piece with a storyteller's warmth and a comic Celtic lilt.

In its time

Published in 1960, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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