Benjamin Ferris 29 min read

Big Joe Merklos was the first of them, cash in hand at the Wide Bend bank, the first buyer in fifteen years for that bone-yard of lonely dreams, Dark Valley, where the river had mysteriously dried.

Benjamin Ferris's 1951 story is an atmospheric first-contact and horror tale of a quiet invasion. Sharp, creeping golden-age SF. Read it for a story where genial, capable strangers buy up a blighted valley and make it bloom again, and a rural community slowly grasps the unnerving truth of the invaders in its midst.

In its time

Published in 1951, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

29 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Vincent Napoli