The Dark Other

Before Stanley Weinbaum made his name in science fiction, he wrote this dark psychological tale, which did not reach print until fifteen years after his death. Patricia Lane loves Nicholas Devine, a soft-spoken young writer, but she begins to notice that a second self surfaces in him without warning, cruel and predatory where the first is gentle. As the violent alter ego grows stronger, Patricia turns to the psychologist Dr. Carl Horker, and the story keeps circling the old question of whether the change is a sickness of the mind or something stranger and older. Weinbaum plays a modern Jekyll and Hyde with real menace and a lover’s desperation. Free to read as a PDF and EPUB edition.