From Beyond the Stars: When the Comic Books Came True

Ten-year-old Tommy Driscoll knows exactly how heroes behave when aliens threaten Earth. He has learned everything from Space Captain McGee and the Star Rover, fearless adventurers who outwit monsters and save entire planets. His physicist father considers those stories harmless entertainment—until Tommy hears that a mysterious signal may be arriving from beyond the Solar System.

Tommy cannot wait weeks for the adults to finish their calculations. Alone inside his father’s laboratory, he begins turning controls at random. Against odds of billions to one, an alien face appears on the television screen. The creature claims to admire humanity and offers Tommy instructions for building technology far beyond anything Earth possesses.

The offer sounds like the beginning of the greatest adventure imaginable. Yet something behind the alien’s friendly manner troubles Tommy. With no scientist beside him and no adult willing to believe what has happened, he must rely on lessons learned from the heroes everyone else dismisses as childish fantasy.

From Beyond the Stars combines scientific speculation with the fearless imagination of childhood. Murray Leinster turns an extraordinary first-contact encounter into a tense battle of judgment between an alien intelligence and one stubborn small boy. The result is clever, suspenseful, and filled with Leinster’s distinctive humor.

Murray Leinster was the best-known pen name of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, whose career included more than 1,500 published stories and articles. His work appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, Argosy, Galaxy, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and Collier’s.