The Pygmy Planet

Larry Manahan, a restless advertising man craving real adventure, is jolted from routine by a fearful phone call from Agnes Sterling, assistant to the reclusive scientist Dr. Travis Whiting. At Whiting's deserted home-laboratory, he finds fresh blood, a crushed revolver, and a bizarre floating globe suspended between pillars of colored light—a tiny living world complete with oceans, deserts, forests, and a city. What seems at first like a scientific marvel quickly becomes a nightmare when Agnes reveals that Whiting's atomic experiments can shrink matter, speed time, and send people to the "Pygmy Planet," where a civilization has risen and fallen in miniature. Before Larry can grasp the truth, a machine-monster emerges from the red beam: a terrifying mechanical body with metal limbs and tentacles, driven by a human brain sealed in crystal. When Agnes is seized and carried off, Larry arms himself, shrinks to the planet's scale, and launches into the violet ray in a desperate rescue mission. On the Pygmy Planet, he crosses a red desert, follows a ruined canal toward a decayed city, and is drawn deeper into a world of wonder, danger, and brutal machinery. There, amid a colossal steam hammer and a chained victim, he confronts the full horror of the experiment—and the fate of Agnes. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.