Avon Fantasy Reader No. 10

About this issue

This issue of Avon Fantasy Reader No. 10 (1949), edited by Donald A. Wollheim, features Robert E. Howard's "A Witch Shall Be Born," a Conan story set in the pre-glacial era. Twin sisters—Queen Taramis of Khauran and her supposedly dead sister Salome, marked by a crimson crescent birthmark—are indistinguishable in appearance. Salome, raised by a Khitai sorcerer and possessing supernatural knowledge, has secretly returned to reclaim the throne. She drugs the palace and reveals that she has allied with Constantius, the exiled Kothic mercenary whom Taramis rejected. The collection also includes "Bimini" by Bassett Morgan (about eternal life granted by arctic auroras), "The Statement of Randolph Carter" by Lovecraft (a graveyard tale), "The Gostak and the Doshes" by Miles J. Breuer (a science-fiction story about semantics), "The Mentanicals" by Francis Flagg (a machine-centered future vision), "Omega" by Amelia Reynolds Long (depicting humanity's end), and "Vengeance in Her Bones" by Malcolm Jameson.