Author Description

A four-man crew crash lands on Mars, and Dick Jarvis, who sets out on his own meets Tweel, a sympathetic creature who shows him the ways of the planet. A strange pyramid building creature, a tentacled 'dream beast', and broken record cart people. Check out for yourself why A Martian Odyssey came in 2nd in the best science fiction stories of all time, right behind Asimov's Nightfall. This short story set the career of Stanley Weinbaum off like a bomb, since he wrote a story like none had done before: it was about an alien who is sentient and intelligent rather than a mindless barbarian. He also added the twist that despite the creature's intelligence, it didn't have human logic or reason. It was followed four months later by a sequel, Valley of Dreams.Stanley Grauman Weinbaum was an American science fiction writer. His first story, "A Martian Odyssey", was published to great acclaim in July 1934, but he died from lung cancer less than a year and a half later.