Joe Gibson 26 min read

A little old man from Time Deliveries, Inc. brings Joe Linger a large square package he never ordered, the strange beginning of an unexpected trip to Mars.

Joe Gibson's 1951 story is a wry AI-and-space-opera tale. Clever, fun golden-age SF. Read it for a genial story where a mysterious delivery upends an ordinary man's life and launches him toward the red planet, in a light, inventive golden-age piece that spins an everyday premise, an unexpected package at the door, into interplanetary adventure.

In its time

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

Reading it

26 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).