A television producer arrives at the home of Doctor Axel Ozoneff expecting a business meeting, but the house is guarded by a strange gardener with perfect manners, dangerous tools, and a devotion that feels a little too precise. The garden itself seems impossible: lemon trees thriving in Massachusetts, exotic blooms with unsettling secrets, and a servant who speaks like a man trained to obey every rule until one rule finally breaks.
I, Gardener by Allen K. Lang begins like a sharp little mystery and slowly tightens into something stranger. The story mixes dry wit, scientific arrogance, and one of science fiction’s most durable questions: what happens when a created mind understands service better than its creator understands responsibility? The result is a compact, eerie tale with the feel of a locked-room murder, the voice of a dark comedy, and a final turn that makes every polite exchange in the garden feel newly dangerous.
Allen Kim Lang, who also published as Allen K. Lang and later Allen Lang, began publishing science fiction with “Machine of Klamugra” in Planet Stories in November 1950. His work appeared in venues including Fantastic Science Fiction Stories, If, Analog, and Planet Stories, with titles such as “Cinderella Story,” “Blind Man’s Lantern,” “Guest Expert,” and “The Chemically Pure Warriors.” I, Gardener first appeared in Fantastic Science Fiction Stories in December 1959, and it shows Lang’s gift for turning a polished conversation into a trap.
