Science Fiction Books

In his garden, Negu Mah, the Callisto uranium merchant, sat sipping a platinum mug of molkai with his guest, Sliss the Venusian. Nanlo, his wife, pushing before her the small serving cart with its platinum molkai decanter, paused for an instant as she entered the shell of pure vitrite which covered the garden, giving it the illusion of out-of-doorness. Negu Mah sat at his ease, his broad, merry,... more...

  remember some bad times, most of them back home on Excenus 23; the worst was when Dad fell under the reaping machine but there was also the one when I got lost twenty miles from home with a dud radio, at the age of twelve; and the one when Uncle Charlie caught me practicing emergency turns in a helicar round the main weather-maker; and the one on Figuerra being chased by a cyber-crane; and the time... more...

Because there were few adults in the crowd, and Colonel "Biff" Hawton stood over six feet tall, he could see every detail of the demonstration. The children—and most of the parents—gaped in wide-eyed wonder. Biff Hawton was too sophisticated to be awed. He stayed on because he wanted to find out what the trick was that made the gadget work. "It's all explained right here in your... more...

The Space Wanderer Returns ilary Grendon piloted his battered, time-worn space flier, the Vagabond, to the smiling Earth that rose rapidly to greet it. Only the instinctive ease of long practise prevented a smash-up, his hands trembled so at the controls.Hilary returns to find alien diskoids in Earth's stratosphere, and out-world lords patrolling her cities.Home again—the old familiar Earth! He... more...

Sam Collins flashed the undertaker a healthy smile, hoping it wouldn't depress old Candle too much. He saluted. The skeletal figure in endless black nodded gravely, and took hold of Sam Collins' arm with a death grip. "I'm going to bury you, Sam Collins," the undertaker said. The tall false fronts of Main Street spilled out a lake of shadow, a canal of liquid heat that soaked... more...

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME NINE Among so many effective and artistic tales, it is difficult to give a preference to one over all the rest. Yet, certainly, even amid Verne's remarkable works, his "Off on a Comet" must be given high rank. Perhaps this story will be remembered when even "Round the World in Eighty Days" and "Michael Strogoff" have been obliterated by centuries of... more...

PREFACE. I must confess that I offer this romance to the reading public with no little trepidation. I am fully aware of having transcended the ordinary rules and paths of legitimate romance, and that I have presumed to broach fearlessly the deep things of God. The scope of the work is infinitely beyond the remotest thought of the writer when he began this labor; but as it grew, deepened and broadened... more...

The SOS crackled and hummed through subspace at a speed which left laggard light far behind. Since subspace distances do not coincide with normal space distances, the SOS was first picked up by a Fomalhautian freighter bound for Capella although it had been issued from a point in normal space midway between the orbit of Mercury and the sun’s in the solar system. The terrible weapon blasted death and... more...

Honath the Pursemaker was hauled from the nets an hour before the rest of the prisoners, as befitted his role as the arch-doubter of them all. It was not yet dawn, but his captors led him in great bounds through the endless, musky-perfumed orchid gardens, small dark shapes with crooked legs, hunched shoulders, slim hairless tails carried, like his, in concentric spirals wound clockwise. Behind them... more...

ommander William Powers, subleader of Survey Group Sirian Combine—1027798 and hence first officer of its ship, the Benefactor, stared coldly out of his cabin port. The Benefactor was resting on the bedrock of Island Twenty-seven of the world called Mureess by its natives. Like all the other such names, it meant "the world," just as the natives' name for themselves, Falsethsa, meant... more...