Fiction Books

Darl Thomas mopped the streams of perspiration from his bronzed face and lean-flanked, wiry body, nude save for clinging shorts and fiber sandals. "By the whirling rings of Saturn," he growled as he gazed disconsolately at his paper-strewn desk. "I'd like to have those directors of ITA here on Mercury for just one Earth-month. I'll bet they wouldn't be so particular about... more...

"Is the maneuver progressing as you wish. Dr. Bird?" asked the Chief of the Air Corps. The famous scientist lowered his binoculars and smiled. "Exactly, General," he replied. "They are keeping a splendid line." "It is the greatest concentration of air force that this country has ever seen," said General Merton proudly. With a nod, Dr. Bird raised his glasses to his eyes... more...

I The short-story commenced its career as a verbal utterance, or, as Robert Louis Stevenson puts it, with "the first men who told their stories round the savage camp-fire." It bears the mark of its origin, for even to-day it is true that the more it creates the illusion of the speaking-voice, causing the reader to listen and to see, so that he forgets the printed page, the better does it... more...

"After us, the deluge!" said Louis XV of France. He died in 1774, and the remaining quarter of the eighteenth century witnessed social changes the most radical, the most widespread which had convulsed civilization since the fall of Rome. "As soon as our peasants seek education," said Catharine II of Russia to one of her ministers, "neither you nor I will retain our places."... more...

CHAPTER I THE LAST SEA LINK WITH FRANCE 1720-1744 The fortress of Louisbourg arose not from victory but from defeat; not from military strength but from naval weakness; not from a new, adventurous spirit of attack, but from a half-despairing hope of keeping one last foothold by the sea. It was not begun till after the fortunes of Louis XIV had reached their lowest ebb at the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.... more...

THE EXPERIMENT "I am glad you came, Clarke; very glad indeed. I was not sure you could spare the time." "I was able to make arrangements for a few days; things are not very lively just now. But have you no misgivings, Raymond? Is it absolutely safe?" The two men were slowly pacing the terrace in front of Dr. Raymond's house. The sun still hung above the western mountain-line, but... more...

THE CANDIDATE FROM YALE. "O your college paper, I suppose?" "No, I never wrote even a letter to the editor." "Took prizes for essays?" "No, I never wrote if I could help it." "But you like to write?" "I'd like to learn to write." "You say you are two months out of college—what college?" "Yale." "Hum—I thought Yale men went... more...

BY RAYMOND F. JONES There is no enemy so hard to fight as a dull gray fog. It's not solid enough to beat, too indefinite to kill, and too omnipresent to escape. [Transcribers Note: This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact and Science Fiction February 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Dr. William Baker was fifty... more...

Chapter I For sheer havoc, there is no gale like a good northwester, when it roars in, through the long winter evenings, driving the spindrift before it between the rocky walls of the fjord. It churns the water to a froth of rushing wave crests, while the boats along the beach are flung in somersaults up to the doors of the grey fisher huts, and solid old barn gangways are lifted and sent flying like... more...

CHAPTER I The trouble from which great events were to come began when Everard Dominey, who had been fighting his way through the scrub for the last three quarters of an hour towards those thin, spiral wisps of smoke, urged his pony to a last despairing effort and came crashing through the great oleander shrub to pitch forward on his head in the little clearing. It developed the next morning, when he... more...