Amazing Stories, May 1947

Amazing Stories, Volume 21, Number 5 This science fiction magazine issue features four complete works of speculative fiction alongside factual articles. The lead novella is Don Wilcox's "Desert of the Damned" (54,000 words), a complete novel wherein strange phenomena and creatures of nightmarish character inhabit an arid wasteland. Richard S. Shaver contributes "The Crystalline Sarcophagus" (4,500 words), exploring the possibility of Jacob's biblical dream vision as literal contact with an alien race. Emil Petaja's "The Ancestral Thread" (6,600 words) examines humanity's connection to ancestral lineages and temporal influence. A debut story titled "Confessions of a Mechanical Man" by author Buzz-Bolt Atomcracker (12,500 words) presents a robot protagonist investigating his mysterious origins and mechanical nature. The issue also contains nonfiction pieces on economics, chemistry, biology, physics, and industrial innovation, plus an editorial discussing the magazine's archival selections and their historical context.