Frank M. Robinson 19 min read

It started with John Kelley, who passed the narrator an idea in a Chicago railway station, an idea that would change everything, if John had only lived to do something about it.

Frank M. Robinson's 1955 story is a thoughtful first-contact and psi-powers tale. Sharp, evocative golden-age SF. Read it for a quietly gripping story that begins with a chance meeting and a whispered idea, and opens onto a hidden human potential, in a well-turned golden-age piece, its title resonant, about connection, solitude, and the sense that we are not alone.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

W. E. Terry