Preview by Frank Belknap Long
Preview by Frank Belknap Long is a science fiction short story written in the mid-20th century. It explores how a seemingly ordinary movie preview veers into alien manipulation, blurring performance and reality as a prelude to an invasion that will erase human memory. At a private screening, publicist Mr. Scanlon touts his star Stella as a “stripped” actress whose unadorned realism will dazzle critics, as a meticulously authentic Western with Robert Mitchum
unfolds. Mid-scene, the film is hijacked: a tentacled, blue-green entity appears, Stella seems to transform into a flapping octopoid form, the Black Hills dissolve into an uncanny landscape—and Scanlon himself vanishes from his seat. No explanation follows; instead, an ominous coda reveals that a week later flying saucers arrive and methodically strip humanity of its treasured knowledge, ensuring no one remembers the preview, Stella’s metamorphosis, or why Scanlon demanded the screening at all. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Long, Frank Belknap, 1903-1994 |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Emshwiller, Ed, 1925-1990 |
| Title | Preview |
| Original Publication | New York: King-Size Publications, Inc., 1955. |
| Series Title | Produced from Fantastic Universe, January 1956 (Vol. 4, No. 6). |
| 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 | Motion pictures -- Fiction |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 78072 |
| Release Date | Feb 28, 2026 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 5122 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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