Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net _The COMING of the ICE_ _By G. Peyton Wertenbaker_ [Illustration: Strange men these creatures of the hundredth century ...] _Copyright, 1926, by E. P. Co., Inc._ Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from _Amazing Stories_ July 1961 and was first published in _Amazing Stories_ June 1926. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note. A Classic Reprint from AMAZING STORIES, June, 1926 Introduction by Sam Moskowitz _One of the gravest editorial problems faced by the editors of AMAZING STORIES when they launched its first issue, dated April, 1926, was the problem of finding or developing authors who could write the type of story they needed. As a stop-gap, the first two issues of AMAZING STORIES were devoted entirely to reprints. But reprints were to constitute a declining portion of the publication's contents for the following four years. The first new story the magazine bought was _Coming of the Ice_, by G. Peyton Wertenbaker, which appeared in its third issue. Wertenbaker was not technically a newcomer to science fiction, since he had sold his first story to Gernsback's SCIENCE AND INVENTION, _The Man From the Atom_, in 1923 when he was only 16! Now, at the ripe old age of 19, he was appearing in the world's first truly complete science fiction magazine._ _The scope of his imagination was truly impressive and, despite the author's youth, _Coming of the Ice_ builds to a climax of considerable power._ _Wertenbaker, under the name of Green Peyton, went on to sell his first novel, _Black Cabin_, in 1933. He eventually became an authority on the Southwest with many regional volumes to his credit: _For God and Texas_, _America's Heartland_, _The Southwest_, and _San Antonio, City of the Sun_. But he never lost his interest in space travel, assisting Hubertus Strughold on the writing of _The Green and Red Planet_, a scientific appraisal of the possibilities of life on the planet Mars published in 1953. He also served for a time as London correspondent for FORTUNE MAGAZINE._ It is strange to be alone, and so cold. To be the last man on earth.... The snow drives silently about me, ceaselessly, drearily. And I am isolated in this tiny white, indistinguishable corner of a blurred world, surely the loneliest creature in the universe. How many thousands of years is it since I last knew the true companionship? For a long time I have been lonely, but there were people, creatures of flesh and blood. Now they are gone. Now I have not even the stars to keep me company, for they are all lost in an infinity of snow and twilight here below.