After a worldwide plague breaks civilization, Joaquin Smith and his sister build an empire up the Mississippi Valley. Who would be brave or foolish enough to stand in their way? Who but a young backwoodsman named Hull Tarvish? Length: Approx. 2 hours Collected in The Mammoth Book of Classic Science Fiction: Short Novels of the 1930's , ed. Isaac Asimov, et al.

Civilization had died screaming in a blaze of nuclear and biological warfare. Gradually, during the Dark Centuries that followed, secrets were re-discovered, and new knowledge gained. Finally, the key to immortality is found, and the preternaturally beautiful Margaret Smith becomes Margot of Urbs and, with her brother, begins a relentless drive to absolute power... When The Black Flame was first published in 1939, Stanley G. Weinbaum had already been dead for three years. By that time, over 18,000 words had been excised or edited from the original manuscript. The intact manuscript, held by Sam Moskowitz, was auctioned off to Forrest J. Ackerman at the First World Science Fiction Convention in 1939. It was subsequently stolen from his collection and never recovered. The publication of this edition was made possible by the discovery of a carbon copy of the manuscript in a trunk of Weinbaum's papers found in the basement of his grandson's house in Denver, Colorado. "In his short career, Stanley G. Weinbaum revolutionized science fiction. We are still exploring the themes he gave us. How good to have this early work again, and now with the author's complete text. It is not only of great historical interest, it is a colorful, inventive, and exciting story." -Poul Anderson "Stanley G. Weinbaum's name deserves to rank with those of Wells and Heinlein - and no more than a handful of others - as among the great shapers of modern science fiction. Sadly, most of the marvelous works he produced in his all too brief career were in the form of short stories and novelettes, and so are overlooked by many of today's readers. Which is all the more reason to rejoice that Tachyon Publications has brought his novel, The Black Flame, back into print for us to read - and moreover, for the first time, it is published just as Weinbaum wrote it." -Frederik Pohl