Gray Morrow - Galaxy, October 1967

[Tina Tempest]

Gray Morrow artwork for the cover of Galaxy Magazine, October 1967 illustrating the story "The Transmorgrafication of Wamba's Revenge" by H. L. Gold the issue is available on line. The story looks like a barnburner, right? The cover is the best thing about this truly tepid tale. Our narrator is an African Pygmy princess named Wamba, in the employ of an American scientist looking for new and exotic. drugs in the African interior. The scientist's very rich wife is having a torrid, thinly disguised, affair with a British great white hunter. Wamba shrinks the philanderers, with a pygmy mystery drug. The shrinking occurs off page. The scientist's wife doesn't even get a first name she's referred to as Mrs. [scientist's last name] throughout. We never interact with them as tiny. And the plot is really stupid. The American scientist sees to it that the pygmy drug is distributed world wide, shrinking the global population so that pymies, who are immune to the drug can take over the world! Dumb, dumb, dumb!