Joseph Samachson 13 min read

All the long, lonely voyage, the alien has dreamed of the cheering crowds and celebrated welcome awaiting him on Earth, of prominent Earthlings rushing to touch their appendages to his tentacles.

Joseph Samachson's 1954 story is a wry first-contact and social-SF tale. Clever, ironic golden-age SF. Read it for a gently comic story that follows an eager alien emissary's fond expectations toward a very different reality, told from the visitor's own hopeful viewpoint, in a well-turned golden-age piece about the gap between imagined and actual welcomes.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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