All were monsters by Manly Wade Wellman
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"All were monsters by Manly Wade Wellman" is a science fiction short story written in the mid-20th century. The tale centers on first contact between a human and an alien scout, using that encounter to explore humanity’s fragility and an outsider’s shock at Earth’s abundant animal life. A solitary farmer is visited by Provvorr, a telepathic visitor who arrives in a ship tailored to match human expectations. Provvorr demonstrates advanced abilities—transmuting a
fork to gold, reviving a crushed moth—and explains he is scouting a future colony, assuming humans will soon destroy themselves. But when he encounters the farmer’s dog, Skip, and cat, Oscar, he panics: on his world there are no other animals, and Earth’s creatures are unreadable, uncontrollable “monsters” to him. Repelled by this teeming biodiversity, he abandons the colonization plan. Before departing, he shares a strikingly simple way to avert humanity’s self-destruction—left tantalizingly undisclosed—so the farmer can pass it to the United Nations. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Wellman, Manly Wade, 1903-1986 |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Hunter, Mel, 1927-2004 |
| Title | All were monsters |
| Original Publication | New York: King-Size Publications, Inc., 1955. |
| Series Title | Produced from Fantastic Universe, May 1955 (Vol. 3, No. 4.) |
| Credits | Tom Trussel (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature |
| Subject | Science fiction |
| Subject | Short stories |
| Subject | Human-alien encounters -- Fiction |
| Subject | Earth (Planet) -- Fiction |
| Category | Text |
| eBook-No. | 77940 |
| Release Date | Feb 15, 2026 |
| Copyright | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 251 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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