Explore "At Isham's" by Blanche Colton Williams on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Setting and idea overbalance plot and characterization in this story, which hardly concerns itself with narrative form. True, it supports -- rather than is supported by -- an embryonic plot; and, true, the plot is marked by a struggle element in the guise of antagonism between two men. But the author is interested in his question and in the debate.
The starting point of the argument is this query, propounded by Norvel, at Isham's restaurant: "If Mars is inhabited by a race so similar to ourselves, what means of communication between us is there so unmistakably of _human origin_ that a sight of it or a sound from it would unmistakably convince them of our relationship?"