Carl Jacobi 16 min read

In Cap Barlow's house on the lonely planet Straba, twin moons rising over magenta hills, a strange kid has landed his ship on the golf course an hour ago, a study in toadstool cubism.

Carl Jacobi's 1954 story is an atmospheric, horror-tinged space opera by a Weird Tales veteran. Vivid, eerie, superbly told. Read it for a somberly exciting yarn from a master of the macabre turned to SF, where isolated colonists on a far world receive a most unsettling young visitor.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

16 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).