Winston K. Marks 16 min read

'It breaks my heart you didn't sign on for this trip,' the letter to Ben begins, nine on the island expedition, and every one already fed up with the replacement ichthyologist who drinks like a fish.

Winston K. Marks's 1954 story is a creeping first-contact and horror tale set on an island paradise. Atmospheric, unsettling golden-age SF. Read it for a story that opens in genial travelogue and darkens by degrees, as an idyllic atoll expedition discovers there is something on the island with them.

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).

Illustrated by

Rudolph Palais