Marion Zimmer Bradley 11 min read

A plain-spoken farmer tells the Reverend how he did his duty by a visitor from another world, never doubting the right of it, in the tale of his own son Matthew, and where the boy truly came from.

Marion Zimmer Bradley's 1954 story is a warm, wry first-contact and social-SF tale. Charming, humane golden-age SF. Read it for a delightful story that folds an alien visitor into homespun rural American life and the tale of Noah and the flood, told in a farmer's plain voice, in a gently ironic golden-age piece with real warmth and a sly, satisfying reveal.

In its time

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

Reading it

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