Evelyn E. Smith 29 min read

The orders were to leave the natives of the new planet strictly alone, but the surveyors' wives are women, and women don't obey orders, or leave people alone.

Evelyn E. Smith's 1957 story is a wry first-contact and colonization comedy. Fun, clever golden-age SF. Read it for a genial story where a survey team's meddlesome wives upend the strict rules of non-interference on an alien world, in a light, well-turned golden-age piece, with a satirical eye, about good intentions, cultural contact, and the irrepressible woman's touch.

In its time

Published in 1957, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Ed Emshwiller