Frank Belknap Long 19 min read

Aboard the contact rocket Star Mist, Ned and Cynthia Jackson approach a little green world five thousand light-years from Earth, and brace for the great many changes that lie ahead.

Frank Belknap Long's 1951 story is a thoughtful colonization and first-contact tale. Warm, evocative golden-age SF. Read it for a fine story of Earth colonists among the stars and their encounter with an ancient, changeless alien presence, exploring what endures and what is lost when humanity plants itself in the fields of distant suns.

In its time

Published in 1951, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Herman B. Vestal