F. L. Wallace 18 min read

The name Rathsden means nothing to you, but from old Germany, the greater Reich, and colonial America come legends, and a horror that will carry you clear across the great curve of the universe.

F. L. Wallace's 1954 story is an eerie horror and psi-powers tale. Sharp, surprising golden-age SF. Read it for an inventive, chilling story that weaves sound science into homespun Illinois geography before launching into cosmic strangeness, from an engineer-turned-writer with a gift for the unsettling, in a memorable golden-age chiller.

In its time

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

Reading it

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