Las ratas están locas (The Rats Are Crazy)

Catalog Note "Las ratas están locas" by Curtis Garland is a science fiction thriller serialized in this Spanish-language pulp magazine. The story, Part One titled "Monstruos científicos" (Scientific Monsters), follows Alexander Miller, an ambitious journalist chosen as the sole press representative to attend a secret "Assembly of Science" on New Year's Eve 1988 at Nobel Prize-winning chemist Aristides Markiewicz's Rocky Mountain estate. Miller abandons his fiancée Crystal to accept the exclusive invitation, which promises to reveal an extraordinary scientific discovery. The narrative intersperses Miller's preparation with contemporary news events: an international political crisis nearly triggering world war, and the mysterious escape of twenty death-row terrorists from the "Guerrilla of Activists of Hate"—a group motivated purely by hatred and mass killing. Miller departs for Denver on December 31st, uncertain what revelation awaits him at the mountain gathering.