A small masterpiece and justly famous, mostly as a result of being adapted for an episode of The Twilight Zone in 1961. It does something I really love in a short story: drops us in at the deep end and makes us race to catch up. We know we’re in a small town in America and that everything is just fine, just wonderful… by why is the word ‘sun’ in quotes in the second line?

Little Anthony is a toddler and a powerful, petulant monster who can make things happen with his mind. Even when he means to help, it rarely goes well. We slowly realise that he is the apocalypse that has befallen this town, with its dwindling supplies and rusting cars.

So, his family and neighbours, stranded somewhere in space, have learned never to express a wish, or even to think about anything being different or better. Because Anthony will respond and the chances are someone will die, or the world will end up a little more broken.

It’s also clearly a product of nuclear paranoia – what might life be like in the rural Midwest after the cities have been destroyed? Would survival be desirable, or hell on earth? It also probably, I think, suggested the plot of the Japanese science fiction manga series and anime feature Akira.

First published in Star Science Fiction Stories No.2, 1953. Collected in various anthologies including The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929-1964, ed. Robert Silverberg, 2005