Meteor is a story written by John Wyndham in 1956. The story is sci-fi.

It is set in the time it was written, in 1950s contemporary Britain. The story is actually set in two places, one part (the human part) in Britain, and the other part (the Alien half) is set on the Planet Forta. The Human part takes place over one night and one day, whereas the alien part is several days (the exact amount we do not know) on Forta and in the middle of Space. The Story has two sets of characters; the Aliens from Forta have their own leaders and the narrator of one half of the story- Onns, His Excellency Cottafts, and the leader of the Globe Iss. Onns is a brave patriot who is willing to risk his life for the continuation of his species, despite the fact that he and the rest of his race are several millimeters tall The human characters are as follows; Mr. Fontain, Graham Tofts (a laid back sort of person), and Sally, Grahams Fianc. Mr. Fontain is Sallys father, a seemingly well educated man. Sally appears to be somewhat bossy and impatient character. The story starts off with a meteor crashing to the ground outside of Mr. Fonatins house. However, they do not inspect the crash until the next day. After this segment, the story is told from a different character and a completely different place, it is told in the form of Diary Extracts form Onnss (a tiny alien from Forta). He talks about their planet, how it is dying and that he is going to be part of a team to venture out on colossal Globes to find a new place to revive their species. The story then switches to the Human point of view, where Sally, Graham, and Mr. Fontain who are talking to a Police inspector who has been called to come inspect the newly landed Meteor. After some debating about its origin, they decide to go have a look at the meteor which is a ball about 2 feet in diameter. The ball starts to let out a hissing sound which makes Mr. Tofts fall backwards seemingly unconscious. Then the story goes back to Onnss Journal where he talks about landing in the new strange world, his speculation at what will come and the journey to the planet. The next part of the story starts with a dead cat with a very strange bullet-like wound going straight through its head. A police sergeant also reports that the meteor was buzzing, like a muted circular saw, puzzled by the dead cat and the buzzing meteor, the Inspector wait for the War Office to turn up. In this next section that we find out that the meteor is in fact a Globe sent by the people of Forta. The aliens from Forta group up and elect group leaders, preparing for what lies ahead. They then leave is their globe, only to find a dark and unforgiving landscape (a garden shed). Soon the aliens encountered a colossal monster (a cat) that kills tens of aliens with one swipe. One of the leaders, Sunss, runs heroically under the cat and shoots it with his fire-rod. The cat dies and falls, instantly crushing Sunss. The remaining aliens find refuge and send out a search party to scout out the way ahead. Whilst the search party was gone, gargantuan creatures (humans) entered the shed and lifted the Globe form the ground and took it away. Isss search party returned, well two of them did, the rest had been killed by a rat. The ball is cut in half and was found not to be a weapon, but it was full of powder and rubbery cells. Suddenly Sallys dog Mitty is heard yelping, and when they rush over to see what happens they find Mitty Dead. Before they can say anything, Sally is stung in her leg very painfully, and Graham sees some small ants on the floor. After picking one up, we finally get a description of what the Fortese look like, tiny pink hemispheres with two eyes a mouth, four-legs and a small rod in one hand. Graham then

spots hundreds of the small pink ants. But without investigating, Graham gets some insecticide and sprays the room, presumably killing the aliens. The Story is written in two different forms, with two different points of view. One half of the story is told from the point of view of Humans in the third person, the other half is written in the form of a journal, like a diary, from the point of view of Onns, an alien from Forta in the first person. The Journal entries give a lot more insight and detail about whats happening, whereas the Human parts of the story are focused on dialogue rather than description. Meteor is a Sci-fi story, and thinks about the idea of other intelligent life out in space, and how different they may be from us. But aside from aliens, the meteor itself also refers to an event that was building up at the time the story was written, the Cold War. In fact the first thing that the inspector thinks the meteor could be is a weapon from the soviets. The idea of soviet weapons and tests was present at the time of the story and appears in the story itself. It even says that the war office was disappointed to find no explosives or weaponry!