Mann Rubin 20 min read

Spud, the world-famous dummy, talks to Mars, with surprising results. Ventriloquist Crawford wraps a smooth rehearsal at Harlow Field, two restless hours yet before the show.

Mann Rubin's 1959 story is a wry psi-powers and social-SF tale with a twist. Clever, engaging golden-age SF. Read it for a genial story where a stage ventriloquist's dummy becomes an unlikely channel for contact with Mars, and the second voice of the title proves stranger than any act.

In its time

Published in 1959, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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