"Dormant" - a great golden-age sci-fi story by A. E. van Vogt (1948)

This dramatic tale of the harrowing results of the discovery of a huge and very strange alien object on a remote Pacific island in the immediate post-WW2 years, told in typical and most effective van-Vogt-style from the “other’s” point of view, was first published in the November 1948 issue of Startling Stories, whose snappy cover here has surely not escaped your attention.

There was the following interesting comment by the editors in that rather splendid issue (198 large-format pages!!) about our favourite sci-fi author: “. . . we take considerable pride in the first appearance in the pages of STARTLING STORIES of A. E. van Vogt, perhaps the most celebrated of living sf authors, whose brilliant short story, DORMANT, graces these pages”.

We have republished here the original version of this particularly well-written text, with the Startling Stories graphics by an unnamed artist.

(6,300 words)

An e-book is available for downloading below.

Dormant (e-book)