The Lonely by Judith Merril -Vintage Science Fiction short story sleepstory human voice

Описание: If we practice our "Space Speech" and listen real hard—Is this the sort of thing we're going to hear?

This story is a bit different. A transcript of a lecture held by an alien professor, touching on the subject of gendered species, such as the Terrans that have two sexes, and with examples from an ill-fated landing at a planet where the humans at the end of their line could not communicate with the natives (or even know the natives were there...), with running commentary by the human researcher that translated it.

Judith Merril, real name Judith Josephine Grossman (1923-1997) was a science fiction author, editor and political activist of notable influence. She published four science fiction novels (two in collaboration with C. M. Kornbluth) and 30 something science fiction short stories between 1948 and 1963, and a couple more SF short stories in the seventies -this in addition to a large number of other genre stories that paid actual money, such as sports, westerns and detective mysteries.
She published SF fanzines in the early days, was a member of the Futurians, became an editor of Science Fiction anthologies and was widely praised for raising the literary standard in science fiction (also, criticized for same), Her second marriage was to Frederik Pohl (a marriage that lasted only four years, and they had a daughter).
Protesting the Vietnam War, she moved to Canada in the late 60s, and eventually became a Canadian citizen.


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Stories of Futures Past presents a vintage science fiction short story, narrated by myself, Tom Trussel. An actual, real living human being, warts and all.

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Copyright notice:
The written text of this story is in the public domain, as determined by the researchers and transcribers at Project Gutenberg, my own research, or it has passed the 95-years-since-publication mark. The story is and should be free for anyone to enjoy. Use of the audio is subject to license.

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