Jon Bing's "A Whiter Shade of Pale" (short story, color blindness): When men refused to see colors!

The key idea is an unusual form of conjectured color blindness: humans living for generations on a cold, always snowy, world with no colors have their vision changed to the extent that they can no longer see bright colors! At least their brains don't register them anymore.

Story summary.

This is a shipwreck story. A star faring humanity, spread across many worlds. A shipwreck forces an unscheduled landing on the barren snowy world of its small crew. A world that was colonized by humans generations ago, but was forgotten.

But all attempts of the stranded travelers to get the attention of natives fail, until a man finally gets the idea...

Fact sheet.

First published: in English translation in Donald A Wollheim (ed)'s "The Best from the Rest of the World: European Science Fiction" (1976). Translated from the original the Norwegian by Steven T Murray.
Rating: B.