Weird Tales, December 1926

About this issue

This issue of Weird Tales features "The Metal Giants," a science fiction serial beginning with Professor Detmold, an eccentric electro-chemist dismissed from Juston University for advancing radical theories. His crowning achievement is an artificial brain constructed from metal with an atomic structure analogous to a living brain, activated by electrical vibrations of specific frequencies. When equipped with a selenium-based artificial eye, the metallic brain demonstrates primitive consciousness by closing a shutter against bright light. Detmold disappears after dismissal, relocating secretly to continue his work. Four years later, mysterious phenomena emerge near Stockton, West Virginia: strange circular ground depressions and reports from farmer Morgan of a three-hundred-foot metal humanoid creature striding through forested valleys, crushing trees beneath mechanical legs that bend like human knees. The creature's footprints match the earlier mysterious markings.