Frank Belknap Long 3 hr 1 min read

A saucer-shaped ship hovers in the sky as the overpowering, alien beauty of a strange woman draws David past the point of no return, and then, from the outer room, comes the voice of his wife Janice.

Frank Belknap Long's 1960 story is a taut first-contact and social-SF tale. Vivid, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a story where an irresistible visitor from another world entangles an ordinary man in danger and desire, told with mounting tension beneath its lurid surface, in a well-turned golden-age piece about temptation, menace, and an alien seduction.

In its time

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

Reading it

3 hr 1 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).

Illustrated by

Basil Gogos