author

Vernon L. McCain

A mid-century science fiction writer remembered for a Martian-contact tale that turns survival into something eerie and unexpected. His work has found a second life through public-domain archives and audiobook editions.

1 Audiobook

The Hitch Hikers

The Hitch Hikers

by Vernon L. McCain

About the author

Very little biographical information about Vernon L. McCain was readily available in the sources I could confirm, which suggests he may be one of the many pulp-era writers whose published fiction outlasted the details of their personal history.

What can be confirmed is that he wrote The Hitch Hikers (also known as The Hitchhikers), a science-fiction story that appeared in Worlds of Science Fiction in November 1954. The story later entered the public domain and is now available through Project Gutenberg, where it continues to reach new readers.

McCain is best approached through the fiction itself: imaginative, compact, and rooted in the classic magazine science fiction tradition of the 1950s, with Mars, first contact, and a clever speculative twist at its center.