Another Virgil Finlay illustration for another canny acquisition by the editors of the October 1948 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories. Their tagline gives a pretty good sense of what is going on. “When a stranger visited Peterville on an atomic holiday, every blessed molecule in the place went amiably insane.” The author of the story is William F. Temple (1914-1989), whom some of you might remember as the author of the woman-duplication story The Four-Sided Triangle, which was made into a 1953 movie by Hammer Studios which I reviewed way back in the early days of Erotic Mad Science. (I also blogged a French-language post for the movie here.)

Don’t worry about our nymph, by the way. In the world of the story she was always a statue, it’s just previously she was draped and now she has suddenly and mysteriously become undraped. And so now our scandalized townspeople are preparing to drape her in the flag, which I personally find very funny.

This issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories is available to read and download at the Internet Archive.