Summary
The story takes place on Wraithworld, a barely habitable planet with unusual weather conditions, including a permanent mist covering most of the planet, which rises up the mountains during the cooler night. Each morning in a wonderful phenomenon called Mistfall, the mist sinks down the mountains, revealing the beauty of the planet.
The planet is home to only a few people, primarily because it is believed that its mist-covered valleys are occupied by "wraiths", ghostly creatures have been claimed to have killed a number of humans. The mystery of the wraiths is also the main tourist attraction on Wraithworld. The only business establishment on the planet is Castle Cloud, a hotel built near the top of one of the mountains, which is primarily visited by "wraith hunters", generally people looking for a thrill.
At the start of the story, an expensive scientific expedition sets out to either find proof of the wraiths' existence, or establish that they are nothing more than a myth. The story, told in first person by one of the reporters covering the expedition, focuses on the conflict between two viewpoints: the leader of the expedition thinks that factual answers for unknowns always benefit humanity, even on a planet with no attractions other than the mystery; by contrast, the owner of Castle Cloud does not want the mystery resolved -- not because the answer is something that "man is not meant to know", but because the knowledge will permanently change people's perceptions of the planet, with little scientific gain resulting from the answer.
George Raymond Richard Martin, also known as GRRM, is an American novelist, screenwriter, television producer and short story writer. He is the author of the series of epic fantasy novels A Song of Ice and Fire, which were adapted into the Emmy Award-winning HBO series Game of Thrones (2011–2019) and its prequel series House of the Dragon (2022–present). He also helped create the Wild Cards anthology series, and contributed worldbuilding for the 2022 video game Elden Ring.
The Hollow Earth is a concept proposing that the planet Earth is entirely hollow or contains a substantial interior space. Notably suggested by Edmond Halley in the late 17th century, the notion was disproven, first tentatively by Pierre Bouguer in 1740, then definitively by Charles Hutton in his Schiehallion experiment around 1774.
Leigh Douglass Brackett was an American science fiction writer known as "the Queen of Space Opera." She was also a screenwriter, known for The Big Sleep (1946), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Long Goodbye (1973). She also worked on an early draft of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), elements of which remained in the film; she died before it went into production. In 1956, her book The Long Tomorrow made her the first woman ever shortlisted for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and, along with C. L. Moore, one of the first two women ever nominated for a Hugo Award. In 2020, she won a Retro Hugo for her novel The Nemesis From Terra, originally published as "Shadow Over Mars".
John Holbrook Vance was an American mystery, fantasy, and science fiction writer. Though most of his work has been published under the name Jack Vance, he also wrote several mystery novels under pen names.
Stargate Atlantis is an adventure and military science fiction television series and part of MGM's Stargate franchise. The show was created by Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper as a spin-off series of Stargate SG-1, which was created by Wright and Jonathan Glassner and was itself based on the feature film Stargate (1994). All five seasons of Stargate Atlantis were broadcast by the Sci-Fi Channel in the United States and The Movie Network in Canada. The show premiered on July 16, 2004; its final episode aired on January 9, 2009. The series was filmed in and around Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
At the Mountains of Madness is a science fiction-horror novella by American author H. P. Lovecraft, written in February/March 1931 and rejected that year by Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright on the grounds of its length. It was originally serialized in the February, March, and April 1936 issues of Astounding Stories. It has been reproduced in numerous collections.
The Mist is a psychological horror novella by American author Stephen King. First published by Viking Press in 1980 as part of the Dark Forces anthology, an edited version was subsequently included in King's 1985 collection Skeleton Crew. In the story, the small town of Bridgton, Maine is shrouded in a dense mist that conceals otherworldly creatures. The protagonist and narrator David Drayton, who has taken refuge with his young son in a supermarket, tries to survive against not only the creatures of the mist, but also fanatical aggression from other survivors. In The Mist, King addresses the themes of man-made fears and religious fundamentalism.
"Rising" is the pilot episode for season one of the military science fiction television series Stargate Atlantis, a Canadian-American spin off series of Stargate SG-1. The episode was written by executive producers Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper, and directed by Martin Wood. The episode was the strongest episode of the whole series on Nielsen household ratings. The episode got strong reviews from major media publishers worldwide.
The Trollenberg Terror is a 1958 British science fiction drama film, produced by Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman and directed by Quentin Lawrence. The film stars Forrest Tucker, Laurence Payne, Jennifer Jayne, and Janet Munro. The special effects are by Les Bowie. The story is based on a 1956 British ITV "Saturday Serial" television programme written by George F. Kerr, Jack Cross and Giles Cooper under the collective pseudonym of "Peter Key". The film was distributed in the UK by Eros Films Ltd. in October 1958 as The Trollenberg Terror. The film was released in the U.S. by Distributors Corporation of America as The Crawling Eye on 7 July 1958. It played on a double bill with the British science fiction film The Strange World of Planet X, renamed Cosmic Monsters for American audiences.
Sandkings is a collection of science fiction short stories by George R. R. Martin, published by Timescape Books in December 1981. The collection won the Locus Award for best single author collection. The multiple-award-winning title story concerns a race of insectoid, militaristic alien "pets" who worship their master until he badly mistreats them.
Works of fiction about the planet Venus have been written since before the 19th century. Its impenetrable cloud cover gave science fiction writers free rein to speculate on conditions at its surface; the planet was often depicted as warmer than Earth but still habitable by humans. Depictions of Venus as a lush, verdant paradise, an oceanic planet, or fetid swampland, often inhabited by dinosaur-like beasts or other monsters, became common in early pulp science fiction, particularly between the 1930s and 1950s. Some other stories portrayed it as a desert, or invented more exotic settings. The absence of a common vision resulted in Venus not developing a coherent fictional mythology, in contrast to the image of Mars in fiction. When portrayed, the native sentient inhabitants, Venusians, were generally portrayed as gentle, ethereal and beautiful. Early science fiction writers who set their stories on Venus included Otis Adelbert Kline in the 1920s; Edgar Rice Burroughs, Olaf Stapledon, and Stanley G. Weinbaum in the 1930s; Robert A. Heinlein, Henry Kuttner, and C. S. Lewis in the 1940s; and Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl in the 1950s.
Ronon Dex is a fictional character in the 2004 science fiction television series Stargate Atlantis. Played by Jason Momoa, he is from Sateda, a civilization which was at a technological level comparable to Earth in the mid-20th century before it was devastated by the Wraith alongside all other advanced civilizations in the Pegasus galaxy. When Ronon Dex and the Atlantis expedition first met in the season 2 episode "Runner", Ronon Dex had been a Runner for the past seven years. He joined the Atlantis Expedition shortly afterward, effectively replacing Aiden Ford on Sheppard's team after Ford had become addicted to a Wraith enzyme and had fled Atlantis.
Teyla Emmagan is a primary fictional character played by Rachel Luttrell in the science fiction series Stargate Atlantis. In the show, she is the daughter of Tagan, and was a leader of a village on the planet Athos. She had seen much of her family culled by the Wraith, although she possessed the ability to "sense" the Wraith.
The mythology of the Stargate franchise is the historical backstory of the Stargate premise, which centers around xeno-mythology as experienced by humans during episodic contact. In the fictional universe of the franchise, the people of Earth have encountered numerous extraterrestrial races on their travels through the Stargate.
Sucker Bait is a science fiction novella by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was first serialized in the February and March 1954 issues of Astounding Science Fiction, and reprinted in the 1955 collection The Martian Way and Other Stories. It has also been adapted as an episode of the BBC anthology television series Out of the Unknown.
The Puzzle Planet is a science-fiction novel by Robert A. W. Lowndes. It was published in 1961 by Ace Books as one of their double novels. According to the author, it marks the first attempt to create a proper science-fiction murder mystery.
Nebula Award Stories 9 is an anthology of award winning science fiction short works edited by Kate Wilhelm. It was first published in the United Kingdom in hardcover by Gollancz in November 1974. The first American edition was published by Harper & Row in January 1975. Paperback editions followed from Corgi Books in the U.K. in November 1976, and Bantam Books in the U.S. in July 1978. The American editions bore the variant title Nebula Award Stories Nine. The book has also been published in German.
Analog's Expanding Universe is the tenth in a series of anthologies of science fiction stories drawn from Analog magazine and edited by then-current Analog editor Stanley Schmidt. It was first published in hardcover by Davis Publications for Longmeadow Press in 1986.
The Man Who Loved Mars is a science fantasy novel by American writer Lin Carter, the first in his Edgar Rice Burroughs- and Leigh Brackett-inspired series The Mysteries of Mars. It was first published in paperback by Fawcett Gold Medal in March 1973. The first British edition was published in hardcover by White Lion in August of the same year. It was reissued by Wildside Press in December 1999. The novel has also been translated into German.
Nightflyers is a 1987 American science fiction horror film based on Nightflyers, a 1980 novella by George R. R. Martin.
