Dates
- Cover date
- November-December 1953
- Pages
- 36
Editions and covers
- Original editionSource ↗
Creators
Stories
- The Silent Towns · 8 pages
Walter surveys a little white silent town on the edge of a dead Martian sea, wondering what happened to all of its inhabitants. He suddenly hears a phone ringing, but he is too late to answer it. After this happens twice, he succeeds in answering a phone and finds a Miss Selsor on the other end, and he meets her, only to find that she is fat and ugly. Knowing that she is the only woman alive and he is the only man, he does the only thing he can: he goes back to the bachelor life!
- The Freaks · 7 pages
The freaks at a circus side show are sick and tired of the stares of the crowds, their snickers, their groans of disgust.....and one decides to quit. But when the freak is found dead in his tent, the circus owners go in search for a replacement. They think they have found one.....but soon they find that the tables have turned on them.
- Public Service! · 1 pages
A man invents special powder that will revolutionize dental care. When dentists from all across the country protest about how his invention will put them out of business, he decides to destroy the powder.
- The Fossil · 6 pages
A crew of explorers land on a desolate dead world and discover giant bones. They piece together the bones to try to replicate how this giant being looked when it was alive. While this is happening, they discover that life on their world originated from this planet. When the process is completed, the tiny humanoid insect beings see that the being is a human baby!
- Derelict Ship · 7 pages
Captain Kaye and his crew spot a derelict rocket ship, the Y-75, and close in to investigate, and discover it has been floating out in space for over 20 years. Going aboard, they discover to their surprise that this 2-man vessel had skeletons of many people on board, so they begin reading the ship's log to determine why. The log tells that the ship needed repairs and set down unknowingly on Elba-II: an exile planet full of prisoners. The prisoners had taken over the ship and forced the crew to take them back to Earth. The captain refused and jettisoned the fuel leaving them to die in space.
Reprinted in
Weird Fantasy (1980), Haunt of Fear (1991), Weird Fantasy (1994), The Fantagraphics EC Artists' Library (2012), Home to Stay! The Complete EC Ray Bradbury Stories (2022)