A small desert town didn't seem a likely place to encounter murder—especially one that had been planned on a world light years away!

A UFO Alien invasion story set in the 50s and your typical western town.

No one knows any longer exactly who wrote this story. “Ivar Jorgensen” is not a real person. It is one of several shared, or house, pseudonyms used by the Ziff-Davis publishing house across several publications such as Fantastic, Amazing Stories, If, Imagination and more.

This was a common practice with the pulp magazines of the golden age, and it seems the main purpose of using such shared pseudonyms was to hide the fact that any given issue (or many issues over time) actually had several/most stories written by the same people. Typically, one story by a given author might be credited to the authors name, and subsequent stories by the same author in the same issue or the next issue were credited to one of the house pseudonyms.

In practice, a small clique of authors churned out stories at a high pace. Many authors that became big names started out like this. Robert Silverberg, Randall Garrett, Harlan Ellison, John Jakes, Stephen Marlowe are some examples of authors who might or might not have written this story and remain uncredited.

Writing this kind of stuff paid poorly so any authors who tried to make a living just by writing needed to belt them out, which also meant that in some cases there was little or no quality control. In some instances the stories even went to print without any editorial input whatsoever, according to later interviews, sometimes the editors didn't even bother to read them...

And of course, sometimes the use of a pseudonym was more prosaic; that the author did not want to be publicly connected to a given story for whatever reason.

No background music, by popular demand. Only my voice, croaks, wheezes, and all. Enjoy!
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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.

Any and all voices and effects are produced live during reading with my actual voice. No obnoxious after effects, synthetic voices or filters used.

English is not my first language. There will be inaccurate accents and the occasional strange pronunciation. No mockery is ever intended.

These stories are also good for English learners / ESL. The full text is right there on the screen in a big and easy to read font. Read along with me. It's great practice!


A note about channel donations:
At this point in my life I do not need nor ask for your money. I do this for the love of the short story and to help promote the enjoyment of science fiction and fantasy literature.

However, if you enjoy my readings and would like to put your money where my mouth is, I would suggest instead to pay it forward to a good cause. Please consider donating to [ Ссылка ] to help them keep up the good work. Project Gutenberg is an organization dedicated to promoting the free distribution of written works in electronic formats. I make no secret that I find the majority of the public domain stories I read here on their website [ Ссылка ]. There you will find a massive collection of ebooks that are free for anyone to read and download. Most of them are vintage with either lapsed or expired copyrights.

I am not affiliated with Project Gutenberg in any way other than that I use their website.

Now, if you still want to throw a dollar or two at your humble storyteller, feel free to use [ Ссылка ]
After all, it’s not as if I’ll say no to money freely given. Any tips I receive will go towards better audio equipment for a cleaner sound in the future, and I will make sure to pay a portion forward to gutenberg.org myself.

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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, or it has passed the 95-years-since-publication mark. The story is and should be free for anyone to enjoy.

Boilerplate license wording off the Gutenberg website:
“This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.”

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If you would like to read some of my own paltry writings, they can be found at [ Ссылка ]

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