Gorgon Planet

Form: Short story

Year: 1954

Publication history:

• 1954 : Nebula February 1954 (m) ,
• 1958 : Super Science Fiction October 1958 (m) , ( "Fight with the Gorgon")
• 1996 : The Road to Nightfall (The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg Volume 4) (tpb) , HarperCollins UK (UK), 347 pp., ISBN 0-586-21372-4
• 2002 : Le Chemin de la nuit: Nouvelles au fil du temps, tome 1, 1953-1970 (tpb) , Flammarion (France), 727 pp., ISBN 2080682350, 32 (in French "Opération Méduse")

This story was Robert Silverberg's first published work of fiction. It concerns a small crew of explorers from Earth who land on an apparently peaceful planet to survey the plant life – it seems there is little animal life. Then they find one member of the crew dead, frozen solid not far from the ship, and they discover an unexpected creature with an unexpected ability.