If You Was a Moklin

The Moklins have been waiting forty years for humans to land on their world. They couldn't be more delighted. These shapeshifting aliens have studied humanity with obsessive devotion, mimicking every gesture, every word, every human custom with eerie precision. When a human finally arrives, the Moklins roll out the red carpet, and what they think is a red carpet, and welcome their idols with an enthusiasm that is absolutely, catastrophically overwhelming. But there's a problem. The Moklins don't just want to meet humans. They want to become them. And evolution on their world is more than happy to help. Leinster's 1951 tale is a masterful bit of comic unease: what starts as flattering attention curdles into something far more unsettling when you realize the Moklins will never, ever stop trying to be you. It's a sharp little story about the horror hidden inside too much friendliness, and the way admiration can become a kind of invasion.