Paul Ernst 1 hr 49 min read

The curious, weird mound squats in the grove like an inverted soup plate, and inside it lies another world: dark, horrible, peopled by blind and terrible demons, a Dante's dream of a second Inferno.

Paul Ernst's 1932 story is a vivid hard-SF adventure into the world of insects. Imaginative, driven golden-age pulp. Read it for a colorful early micro-adventure, where explorers shrink to raid a termite mound and battle the monstrous denizens of an alien civilization beneath the grass.

In its time

Published in 1932, during the 1930s, space opera soars.

Reading it

1 hr 49 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).