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Where the World is Quiet
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29 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 1, 1954
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53 people want to read
About the author
Henry Kuttner
756 books214 followersHenry Kuttner was, alone and in collaboration with his wife, the great science fiction and fantasy writer C.L. Moore, one of the four or five most important writers of the 1940s, the writer whose work went furthest in its sociological and psychological insight to making science fiction a human as well as technological literature. He was an important influence upon every contemporary and every science fiction writer who succeeded him. In the early 1940s and under many pseudonyms, Kuttner and Moore published very widely through the range of the science fiction and fantasy pulp markets.
Their fantasy novels, all of them for the lower grade markets like Future, Thrilling Wonder, and Planet Stories, are forgotten now; their science fiction novels, Fury and Mutant, are however well regarded. There is no question but that Kuttner's talent lay primarily in the shorter form; Mutant is an amalgamation of five novelettes and Fury, his only true science fiction novel, is considered as secondary material. There are, however, 40 or 50 shorter works which are among the most significant achievements in the field and they remain consistently in print. The critic James Blish, quoting a passage from Mutant about the telepathic perception of the little blank, silvery minds of goldfish, noted that writing of this quality was not only rare in science fiction but rare throughout literature: "The Kuttners learned a few thing writing for the pulp magazines, however, that one doesn't learn reading Henry James."
In the early 1950s, Kuttner and Moore, both citing weariness with writing, even creative exhaustion, turned away from science fiction; both obtained undergraduate degrees in psychology from the University of Southern California and Henry Kuttner, enrolled in an MA program, planned to be a clinical psychologist. A few science fiction short stories and novelettes appeared (Humpty Dumpty finished the Baldy series in 1953). Those stories -- Home There Is No Returning, Home Is the Hunter, Two-Handed Engine, and Rite of Passage -- were at the highest level of Kuttner's work. He also published three mystery novels with Harper & Row (of which only the first is certainly his; the other two, apparently, were farmed out by Kuttner to other writers when he found himself incapable of finishing them).
Henry Kuttner died suddenly in his sleep, probably from a stroke, in February 1958; Catherine Moore remarried a physician and survived him by almost three decades but she never published again. She remained in touch with the science fiction community, however, and was Guest of Honor at the World Convention in Denver in 198l. She died of complications of Alzheimer's Disease in 1987.
His pseudonyms include:
Edward J. Bellin
Paul Edmonds
Noel Gardner
Will Garth
James Hall
Keith Hammond
Hudson Hastings
Peter Horn
Kelvin Kent
Robert O. Kenyon
C. H. Liddell
Hugh Maepenn
Scott Morgan
Lawrence O'Donnell
Lewis Padgett
Woodrow Wilson Smith
Charles Stoddard
Their fantasy novels, all of them for the lower grade markets like Future, Thrilling Wonder, and Planet Stories, are forgotten now; their science fiction novels, Fury and Mutant, are however well regarded. There is no question but that Kuttner's talent lay primarily in the shorter form; Mutant is an amalgamation of five novelettes and Fury, his only true science fiction novel, is considered as secondary material. There are, however, 40 or 50 shorter works which are among the most significant achievements in the field and they remain consistently in print. The critic James Blish, quoting a passage from Mutant about the telepathic perception of the little blank, silvery minds of goldfish, noted that writing of this quality was not only rare in science fiction but rare throughout literature: "The Kuttners learned a few thing writing for the pulp magazines, however, that one doesn't learn reading Henry James."
In the early 1950s, Kuttner and Moore, both citing weariness with writing, even creative exhaustion, turned away from science fiction; both obtained undergraduate degrees in psychology from the University of Southern California and Henry Kuttner, enrolled in an MA program, planned to be a clinical psychologist. A few science fiction short stories and novelettes appeared (Humpty Dumpty finished the Baldy series in 1953). Those stories -- Home There Is No Returning, Home Is the Hunter, Two-Handed Engine, and Rite of Passage -- were at the highest level of Kuttner's work. He also published three mystery novels with Harper & Row (of which only the first is certainly his; the other two, apparently, were farmed out by Kuttner to other writers when he found himself incapable of finishing them).
Henry Kuttner died suddenly in his sleep, probably from a stroke, in February 1958; Catherine Moore remarried a physician and survived him by almost three decades but she never published again. She remained in touch with the science fiction community, however, and was Guest of Honor at the World Convention in Denver in 198l. She died of complications of Alzheimer's Disease in 1987.
His pseudonyms include:
Edward J. Bellin
Paul Edmonds
Noel Gardner
Will Garth
James Hall
Keith Hammond
Hudson Hastings
Peter Horn
Kelvin Kent
Robert O. Kenyon
C. H. Liddell
Hugh Maepenn
Scott Morgan
Lawrence O'Donnell
Lewis Padgett
Woodrow Wilson Smith
Charles Stoddard
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Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
September 1, 2015
This 1954 short story has a little bit of everything. Exotic location? Check ~~ Peru. Strange fog? Check ~~ ever since the earthquake three months ago, a thick fog has blanketed the Andean peak of Huascan. Missing virgins? Check ~~ seven so far. Old man to tell the details of the story and get our hero interested? Check ~~ Fra Rafael, crippled in an avalanche and no longer able to climb the mountain to check things out for himself. Intrepid hero? Check ~~ known only as White, a young anthropologist whose work for The Institute is finished so of course he and his scientific mind have a little time to kill. Wouldn't it be fun to climb the mountain, solve the mystery of the fog and bring home those wandering virgins? Besides, his burro is packed so he can leave right away. (Always handy to keep your burro packed just in case you are ever asked to venture into dangerous country where your only companions will be wild llamas, condors, snow, cold, and desolation!)
None of the local men will go with him. None of the porters who have been working with him will go either. They are all convinced that their ancient gods and devils have returned. (Or maybe they just don't have their burros packed and don't want to delay White's departure?)
Anyway, off he goes and discovers...well, a little bit of everything. At first I thought this would be the typical 'lost world' type of story, but it was better than that, and even though parts of it were still predictable, I was pleasantly surprised overall. (Not as much as the poor burro was at one point, but such an accident was inevitable what with all that fog, I suppose.)
None of the local men will go with him. None of the porters who have been working with him will go either. They are all convinced that their ancient gods and devils have returned. (Or maybe they just don't have their burros packed and don't want to delay White's departure?)
Anyway, off he goes and discovers...well, a little bit of everything. At first I thought this would be the typical 'lost world' type of story, but it was better than that, and even though parts of it were still predictable, I was pleasantly surprised overall. (Not as much as the poor burro was at one point, but such an accident was inevitable what with all that fog, I suppose.)
March 26, 2022
“Humanity is inclined to invest all things with its own attributes, forgetting that outside the limitations of time and space and size, familiar laws of nature do not apply.”
It’s a blessing that the first person narrator in the short story Where the World Is Quiet reminds us thereof because otherwise the flower-like woman or woman-like flower that communicates via thought and drinks blood would probably not create the intended effect of awe and wonder but rather one of amusement. The story was published under the name of C.H. Liddell, which was one of several pseudonyms the two science fiction writers and married couple C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner used for their collaborative works. On the GR author’s page for C.L. Moore it says that Henry Kuttner wrote a fan letter to her, thinking she was a man, and that four years after they had met for the first time – he probably had amble time to rectify his initial assumption –, they got married and eventually started writing fiction together. I mention this because I think this quite nice.
The story itself, though, did not impress me a lot. It starts very well, in a little village somewhere in the Andes, where the population is riddled with fear because after an earthquake, young girls keep mysteriously disappearing, seemingly walking away out of an impulse on their own and never returning. When a missionary tells this to a young and ambitious anthropologist, the narrator of the story, this young man is intrigued by the mystery and also by the chance of unravelling it and discovering something great or important. When he finally reveals the solution to the mystery, he is faced with something too hard to understand for a scientist brought up on logic and the laws of science as we know them. Although the story starts very well, more in the vein of a horror story than of science fiction, the plot develops more and more towards the categories of fantasy literature – also a genre the two authors were proliferous in – but the dénouement comes too easily and with deus ex machina help.
All in all, despite the promising beginning, this tale was quite disappointing.
It’s a blessing that the first person narrator in the short story Where the World Is Quiet reminds us thereof because otherwise the flower-like woman or woman-like flower that communicates via thought and drinks blood would probably not create the intended effect of awe and wonder but rather one of amusement. The story was published under the name of C.H. Liddell, which was one of several pseudonyms the two science fiction writers and married couple C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner used for their collaborative works. On the GR author’s page for C.L. Moore it says that Henry Kuttner wrote a fan letter to her, thinking she was a man, and that four years after they had met for the first time – he probably had amble time to rectify his initial assumption –, they got married and eventually started writing fiction together. I mention this because I think this quite nice.
The story itself, though, did not impress me a lot. It starts very well, in a little village somewhere in the Andes, where the population is riddled with fear because after an earthquake, young girls keep mysteriously disappearing, seemingly walking away out of an impulse on their own and never returning. When a missionary tells this to a young and ambitious anthropologist, the narrator of the story, this young man is intrigued by the mystery and also by the chance of unravelling it and discovering something great or important. When he finally reveals the solution to the mystery, he is faced with something too hard to understand for a scientist brought up on logic and the laws of science as we know them. Although the story starts very well, more in the vein of a horror story than of science fiction, the plot develops more and more towards the categories of fantasy literature – also a genre the two authors were proliferous in – but the dénouement comes too easily and with deus ex machina help.
All in all, despite the promising beginning, this tale was quite disappointing.
September 18, 2013
This is one of the first pulp sci-fi tales I’ve read, and I have to say I enjoyed it thoroughly. This one seems a bit more focused on the adventure aspect, and at times it’s like something I’d expect to read in Weird Tales. A man traverses a snowy, foggy mountain in the Andes to discover what became of seven native girls who disappeared, and discovers beings there from another time.
September 21, 2015
This is a science fiction short story about a man that looks for seven young girls that went missing, an unearthly fog, a snowy mountain, and an unreal open warm valley with strange trees, He also meets a few strange creatures. Its a very interesting story that I couldn't stop myself from reading. Over halfway through it, I realized it had a Doctor Who feel to it like I was watching an episode of the show(I love doctor Who BTW)! That was a plus :) ... overall a greatly entertaining story!
November 10, 2019
A short trip, but what a trip. Either a great example of imagination... or drugs.
So, imagine you're a priest living in a small village surrounded by mountains. One day a mysterious fog covers the mountain and seven of the girls living in the village have gone into the fog never to return. The people of the village start thinking its old gods, taking the girls away for some kind of sacrifice. You want to check it out, you try, but you're semi-handicapped due to some bum legs and so, you tell a visiting anthropologist the story!
He's young, cocky, and eager for adventure. So he takes off, and into the fog he goes.
And then shit gets weird.
We're talking time rifts, alien species feeding on mammals, alien species taking on the form of the thing they killed, and Lahar, an unforgettable (undeniably female) white, marble-esque, telephatic flower who drinks human blood and is kind of... sexy? There's certainly hints of that at least. Oh, and she has an intelligent robot as her personal servant.
The whole way through I just felt like, "what. is. happening?" Lol. It's very short, you'll read it in an hour. But if you have an hour to spare it's not a bad trip, just a weird one.
So, imagine you're a priest living in a small village surrounded by mountains. One day a mysterious fog covers the mountain and seven of the girls living in the village have gone into the fog never to return. The people of the village start thinking its old gods, taking the girls away for some kind of sacrifice. You want to check it out, you try, but you're semi-handicapped due to some bum legs and so, you tell a visiting anthropologist the story!
He's young, cocky, and eager for adventure. So he takes off, and into the fog he goes.
And then shit gets weird.
We're talking time rifts, alien species feeding on mammals, alien species taking on the form of the thing they killed, and Lahar, an unforgettable (undeniably female) white, marble-esque, telephatic flower who drinks human blood and is kind of... sexy? There's certainly hints of that at least. Oh, and she has an intelligent robot as her personal servant.
The whole way through I just felt like, "what. is. happening?" Lol. It's very short, you'll read it in an hour. But if you have an hour to spare it's not a bad trip, just a weird one.
November 15, 2025
An enjoyable little story. I liked how the plot moved steadily forward at a comfortable pace, not rushing and not getting bogged down with unnecessary, contemplative digressions. The story always came first.
There was some cool stuff in time-slip valley. Lahar, the sexy, lamian flower was.....kind of sexy, and she had a pretty cool robot servant which was all tentacles and flashing colours.
I kind of wish more time was spent with the Baby Badguy. Maybe having the final confrontation a little more drawn out and making it a little more Lovecraftian and scary. Ah well, such it is.
But still, it was a fun hour spent in The Alternate Universe.
There was some cool stuff in time-slip valley. Lahar, the sexy, lamian flower was.....kind of sexy, and she had a pretty cool robot servant which was all tentacles and flashing colours.
I kind of wish more time was spent with the Baby Badguy. Maybe having the final confrontation a little more drawn out and making it a little more Lovecraftian and scary. Ah well, such it is.
But still, it was a fun hour spent in The Alternate Universe.
January 19, 2025
While in Peru, an American anthropologist named White learns that seven young women have vanished into the Andean mountains shortly after an earthquake occurred and a fog settled over the land. Men were sent to look for them to no avail. The fog was too thick. White embarks on a one-man search and rescue mission up the mountain and emerges through the fog into a strange valley with ruined structures, blue trees, and saffron vines. He locates the missing girls only to find that their life force is being drained from them by an alien creature—and it isn’t the only one.
March 11, 2022
Entertaining fantasy listening 🔰😀
A will written fantasy horror thriller adventure short story by Henry Kuttner about terror in the Andes mountains were young woman 🚺 are dying. I would recommend this novella to anyone looking for a quick read. Enjoy the adventure of reading 👓 or listening 🎶to novels 🔰😈 2022
A will written fantasy horror thriller adventure short story by Henry Kuttner about terror in the Andes mountains were young woman 🚺 are dying. I would recommend this novella to anyone looking for a quick read. Enjoy the adventure of reading 👓 or listening 🎶to novels 🔰😈 2022
November 10, 2017
Kuttner gets the awe and wonder.
March 12, 2026
Scifi short story by a master, well done!!
March 29, 2026
I liked this because it came across as very gentle, almost poetic. A nice change from the usual frenetic pace of much of the sci-fi of that era.
July 16, 2012
Entertaining enough, but ultimately a pale shadow of The Dark World.
August 20, 2015
This is a pulp fiction tale about an archaeologist who goes into the mountains to find seven young women only to find something else. Not a bad story, but one that has appeared many times.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews