Carl Jacobi 25 min read

A soft rain falls as they emerge from dark woods onto a bleak alien shore, the sea gray and sullen, the sand bone-white, the first of nine landings on the strangest journey ever made.

Carl Jacobi's 1955 story is an atmospheric, eerie horror-tinged space opera. Vivid, moody golden-age SF. Read it for a haunting tale by a Weird Tales veteran, where a party's search across a series of strange worlds becomes a Medusa-dark voyage toward a hidden and dreadful secret.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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