[PW] Re: SS-Martian Protoplasm

[Dennis Lien]

I checked my copy of the STAR SCIENCE FICTION STORIES (#1) anthology
last night, and can confirm that Dan is right: the story you are
seeking is indeed "The Last Weapon" by Robert Sheckley.

Dennis Lien / U of Minnesota Libraries // d-lien at umn.edu


At 06:33 PM 5/5/2006, you wrote:
>Shari Haber wrote:
> > Dear Womb at ts:
> >
> > My client, and a couple of other people that I've stumbled across on the
> > Internet, are looking for a SF short story that originally appeared in
> > one of the SF magazines during the 1940s or 1950s, give or take a few
> > years. It concerns two adventurers/explorers/Terrans that are looking
> > for a lost Martian civilization. They stumble into a
> > cave/cavern/crevasse where they find "the ultimate weapon." (It might be
> > behind a force field of some kind, or maybe it's the "creature" (read
> > on) who is behind the force field.)
> >
> > One explorer kills the other over the weapon. A creature (maybe a
> > humongous mouth) say it likes to eat cold protoplasm, and then eats the
> > dead explorer. Afterwards, the creature says "I like warm protoplasm
> > too."

Dan Goodman said:

>I remembered it as being by Robert Sheckley, and "The Last Weapon"
>sounds like the right title:
>  From the Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base http://isfdb:
>Title: The Last Weapon
>Author: Robert Sheckley
>Year: 1953
>
>Star Science Fiction Stories (1953, Ballantine, $1.50, 202pp, hc) Cover:
>Richard Powers
>Star Science Fiction Stories (1953, Ballantine, #16, $0.35, 202pp, pb)
>Cover: Richard Powers
>New Worlds, August 1954 (1954, 1s 6d, 128pp) Cover: Gerard Quinn
>The People Trap and Other Pitfalls (1968, Dell, #6881, $0.60, 204pp, pb)
>Far Out (1974, NEL, 0174320558, pb) / ed Arthur Arkley
>The People Trap plus Mindswap (1981, Ace, 0441658741, 469pp, pb)
><snip>
>The Collected Short Stories of Robert Sheckley Book Three, Pulphouse
>1991 <snip>