Science Fiction Books

A gentle fancy for the Christmas Season—an oft-told tale with a wistful twistful of Something that left the Earth with a wing and a prayer.Earth was so far away that it wasn't visible. Even the sun was only a twinkle. But this vast distance did not mean that isolation could endure forever. Instruments within the ship intercepted radio broadcasts and, within the hour, early TV signals. Machines... more...

PROLOGUE In the first place please bear in mind that I do not expect you to believe this story. Nor could you wonder had you witnessed a recent experience of mine when, in the armor of blissful and stupendous ignorance, I gaily narrated the gist of it to a Fellow of the Royal Geological Society on the occasion of my last trip to London. You would surely have thought that I had been detected in no less... more...

The river ran still and deep, green and gray in the eddies with the warm smell of late summer rising out of the slow water. Madrone and birch and willow, limp in the evening quiet, and the taste of smouldering leaves.... It wasn’t the Russian River. It was the Sacred Iss. The sun had touched the gem-encrusted cliffs by the shores of the Lost Sea of Korus and had vanished, leaving only the stillness... more...

The manner in which a man has lived is often the key to the way he will die. Take old man Donegal, for example. Most of his adult life was spent in digging a hole through space to learn what was on the other side. Would he go out the same way? Old Donegal was dying. They had all known it was coming, and they watched it come—his haggard wife, his daughter, and now his grandson, home on emergency leave... more...

he faxgram read: REPORT MA IS INSTANTER GRAVIS. The news obelisk just off the express strip outside Mega Angeles' Galactic Survey Building was flashing: ONE OF OUR STAR SHIPS IS MISSING! Going up in the lift, I recalled what I had seen once scrawled upon the bulkhead of a GS trainer: Space is kind to those who respect her. And underneath, in different handwriting: Fear is the word, my boy. The... more...

Over the cabin ’phone, Ann’s voice was crisp with anger. “Mr. Lord, I must see you at once.” “Of course, Ann.” Lord tried not to sound uncordial. It was all part of a trade agent’s job, to listen to the recommendations and complaints of the teacher. But an interview with Ann Howard was always so arduous, so stiff with unrelieved righteousness. “I should be free until—” “Can you... more...

Sandeman, 2624 CE It was midafternoon before Dana's hunger overcame her excitement at being on Sandeman, hiking with her chosen lord—her thakur, in the Sandeman term she preferred—and trying to track a balik. She hadn't gotten within two hundred meters of the wolflike predator, and had finally realized she wasn't going to, so the two found a small clearing with bare rocks which made... more...

Somebody was wrapping him in a sheet of ice and spice. Somebody was pulling it tight so that his toes ached and his fingers tingled. He still had fingers, and eyes too. He opened his eyes and they turned in opposite directions and couldn't focus on what they saw. He made an effort, but couldn't keep it up and had to let his eyes flutter shut again. "Rest. You're all right."... more...

TALBOT had been working that day, far up in the Catalinas, looking over some mining prospects for his company, and was returning to the Mountain View Hotel in Oracle when, from the mouth of an abandoned shaft some distance back of that town, he saw a strange object emerge. "Hello," he said to Manuel, his young Mexican assistant, "what the devil can that be?" Manuel crossed himself... more...

CHAPTER I. So thrilling were my experiences during that period, so overcrowded with feverish action and strong emotions was each wonderful moment, and so entirely changed are the conditions of life as I now find it, that it is with considerable difficulty that I recall in detail all that happened prior to my remarkable discovery which opened communication between Earth and Mars. One says... more...