“So the last fly has obligingly walked into the spider’s parlor,” he murmured, with a laugh.
Eve’s lips parted, showing the even white teeth—those slightly pointed teeth.
“You’re quite sane, my dear,” She said calmly. “You are now one of us; a revenant, even as I, and to live you must feed on the living.”
Was it a trick of tired nerves, the retention of the light-image upon my retina in the dark?
Ellaby’s society was a perfect democracy, where all men were equal. But some still wanted more personal attention, and they got it, like The Dictator.
Minor Planets was the one solid account they had. At first they naturally wanted to hold on to it.
Piracy in the past has acquired the gaudy technicolor of high romance. In the present, piracy is as tawdry as tabloid headlines. But piracy in the far future, when presented as vividly as in this story, can be scary stuff.
“Long may the good lady serve us poor folks in the dim past,” writes the author, who will be remembered for his THE LOVE OF FRANK NINETEEN (Dec. 1957) and who feels that much of SF “misses” because it lacks the human angle. “I believe you can have gimmicks and human interest too,” he writes.
What will happen when the alien ships strike Earth? And later? Who will survive? What will life be like in that latter-day jungle? William F. Nolan, well known in SF circles on the West Coast, returns with this grim story of the days and the nights of Lewis Stillman—survivor . . .
The domination of the minds of tractable Man is not new. Many men have dreamed of it. Certainly some of them have tried. This man succeeded.