margaretstclair

In Margaret St. Clair’s “Flowering Evil," Amy Dinsmore is quite the gardener. She loves tending to her collection of Martian and Venusian plants, flowers, and succulents. But one plant, in particular, is a little bit more than she bargained for. Originally published in Planet Stories vol 4 num 7, Summer 1950, this story can be found in audio format 

in Pseudopod (825, August 2022) and in text via an archive.  

Recommended in this episode: Cherie Dimaline’s VenCo

UP NEXT: Daphne DuMaurier’s My Cousin Rachel

 Buy Toil and Trouble here!

Dirk has lost his wife, Joan, and he is devastated by grief. Joan was a pilot who crashed during a routine flight, and he knows there isn’t any hope of her survival because he was talking to her on the radio when she crashed. He knows she went down in the ocean with no land in sight, and he knows the search was futile. But, despite all evidence to the contrary, he still feels like there’s a chance she’s alive. He feels like there is a compass in his mind telling him precisely where to find her. He hires a plane and two pilots and begins a search of his own. What he finds, however, is beyond anything he could have imagined. There may have been an island near Joan’s crash site, and it has a very mysterious reputation among travelers. 

Margaret St. Clair’s story “The Island of the Hands” was originally published in Weird Tales Magazine in 1952.

Recommended in this episode: Renfield and Star Trek: Picard

UP NEXT: Nadia Bulkin’s “Wish  You Were Here” 

Buy Toil and Trouble here! And see the Valancourt selection of Monster, She Wrote books here.

Margaret St. Clair’s story “The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles” is a tale inspired by  the Lord Dunsany story “How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art Upon the Gnoles.” St. Clair’s tale is a wonderful update. The gnoles are still horrible creatures of fantasy, but the main character is completely mundane. The hero of the story is Mortensen, a hapless salesman, who only wants to meet his sales quota and maybe get “a special mention at the annual sales-force dinner.” Does it matter that these are dangerous monsters? Not really, because as any good salesman knows, adaptability is key.

Suggested: WandaVision and Stacy Schiff's The Witches

Next Episode: Tananarive Due’s short story “Patient Zero”

Please rate and review us, or better yet, tell a friend. Our social media is @MonsterWrote on Twitter and Instagram. Our email is monsterwrote@gmail.com. This episode was produced and researched by Lisa and Mel. Theme music is “Misconception” by Nicolas Gasparini, used with permission.