The Virgin of Zesh is a science fiction novella by American writer L. Sprague de Camp, the fourth book of his Viagens Interplanetarias series and the third of its subseries of stories set on the fictional planet Krishna. Chronologically, it is the fifth Krishna novel. It was originally published in the magazine Thrilling Wonder Stories for February 1953. It was first published in book form together with The Wheels of If in the paperback collection The Virgin & the Wheels by Popular Library in 1976. For the later standard edition of Krishna novels it was published together with The Tower of Zanid in the paperback collection The Virgin of Zesh & The Tower of Zanid by Ace Books in 1983. The first English language stand-alone edition was published as an E-book by Gollancz's SF Gateway imprint on September 29, 2011, as part of a general release of de Camp's works in electronic form. The novel has also been translated into German. As with all of the "Krishna" novels and novellas, the title of The Virgin of Zesh has a "Z" in it, a practice de Camp claimed to have devised to keep track of them. Short stories in the series do not follow the practice, nor do Viagens Interplanetarias works not set on Krishna. Source: Wikipedia (en)