Jerome Bixby 14 min read

On an asteroid beneath a sky so crowded with stars they look like silver clouds near enough to touch, a man confronts the strange, beautiful creature, the last of its kind, called Zen.

Jerome Bixby's 1952 story is a haunting, lyrical first-contact and social-SF tale. Evocative, poignant, superbly told. Read it for a beautifully written story of an encounter with a gentle, doomed alien amid the breathtaking splendor of an asteroid sky, in a well-turned golden-age piece rich with wonder, melancholy, and a quiet meditation on endings and survival.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

William Ashman