"The Merman" is a science fiction story by American writer L. Sprague de Camp, based on the concept of human biological engineering . It was first published in the magazine Astounding Science-Fiction for December, 1938. It first appeared in book form in the collection The Wheels of If and Other Science Fiction (Shasta, 1949); it later appeared in the anthology Science Fiction of the Thirties (Bobbs-Merrill, 1975) and the collection The Best of L. Sprague de Camp (Doubleday, 1978). The story has been translated into German