Avon Fantasy Reader No. 9

This ninth issue of Avon Fantasy Reader (1949) collects ten reprinted fantasy and science-fiction stories edited by Donald A. Wollheim. Clark Ashton Smith's "The Flower-Women" opens the volume, depicting sorcerer Maal Dweb abandoning his omnipotence to seek adventure on the planet Votalp. There he discovers semi-plant, semi-female vampiric creatures engaged in their own conflicts. The collection also includes H. F. Arnold's "The Night Wire," P. Schuyler Miller's "Through the Vibrations" (exploring Atlantis), Fritz Leiber Jr.'s "The Man Who Never Grew Young," and Otis Adelbert Kline's interplanetary war tale "The Man From the Moon." Additional contributions come from Robert Bloch, William Hope Hodgson, Lord Dunsany, and others, representing classic weird and science-fiction from earlier pulp magazines.