Science Fiction Books

A Place So Foreign ================== My Pa disappeared somewhere in the wilds of 1975, when I was just fourteen years old. He was the Ambassador to 1975, but back home in 1898, in New Jerusalem, Utah, they all thought he was Ambassador to France. When he disappeared, Mama and I came back through the triple-bolted door that led... more...

Before the first ship from Earth made a landing on Venus, there was much speculation about what might be found beneath the cloud layers obscuring that planet's surface from the eyes of all observers. One school of thought maintained that the surface of Venus was a jungle, rank with hot-house moisture, crawling with writhing fauna and man-eating flowers. Another group contended hotly that Venus was... more...

Isle of Skye, 1 Jan 2149 CE It was just past midnight when the woman in wet, torn forest green saw what had to be the light from windows of a small house. She stumbled toward it gratefully, hoping for warmth and some sort of communications. Dammit, equipment failure and a plane crash were no way to start New Year's Day! As she neared the house, she heard party sounds, and grinned. It seemed that... more...

Strange Intruder Sime Hemingway did not sleep well his first night on Mars. There was no tangible reason why he shouldn't. His bed was soft. He had dined sumptuously, for this hotel's cuisine offered not only Martian delicacies, but drew on Earth and Venus as well.Sime Hemingway, of the I. F. P., strikes at the insidious interests that are lashing high the war feeling between Earth and... more...

It is a sea, though they call it sand. They call it sand because it is still and red and dense with grains. They call it sand because the thin wind whips it, and whirls its dusty skim away to the tight horizons of Mars. But only a sea could so brood with the memory of aeons. Only a sea, lying so silent beneath the high skies, could hint the mystery of life still behind its barren veil. To practical,... more...

His "planet" was the smallest in the solar system, and the loneliest, Thad Allen was thinking, as he straightened wearily in the huge, bulging, inflated fabric of his Osprey space armor. Walking awkwardly in the magnetic boots that held him to the black mass of meteoric iron, he mounted a projection and stood motionless, staring moodily away through the vision panels of his bulky helmet into... more...

He liked the flat cracking sound of the gun. He liked the way it slapped back against his shoulder when he fired. Somehow it did not seem a part of the dank, steaming Venusian jungle. Probably, he realized with a smile, it was the only old-fashioned recoil rifle on the entire planet. As if anyone else would want to use one of those old bone-cracking relics today! But they all failed to realize it made... more...

IN SEARCH OF THE UNKNOWN I Because it all seems so improbable—so horribly impossible to me now, sitting here safe and sane in my own library—I hesitate to record an episode which already appears to me less horrible than grotesque. Yet, unless this story is written now, I know I shall never have the courage to tell the truth about the matter—not from fear of ridicule, but because I myself shall... more...

CHAPTER I. THE PROFESSOR AND HIS FAMILY On the 24th of May, 1863, my uncle, Professor Liedenbrock, rushed into his little house, No. 19 Königstrasse, one of the oldest streets in the oldest portion of the city of Hamburg. Martha must have concluded that she was very much behindhand, for the dinner had only just been put into the oven. "Well, now," said I to myself, "if that most impatient... more...

This, then, was the Creche, Anno Domini 2500. A great, mile-square blind cube topping a ragged mountain; bare escarpments falling away to a turbulent sea. For five centuries the Creche had stood so, and the Androids had come forth in an unending stream to labor for Man, the Master.... —Quintus Bland, The Romance of Genus Homo. irector Han Merrick paced the floor nervously. His thin, almost ascetic... more...