Science Fiction Books

Here the dark cave, along which Nat Starrett had been creeping, broadened into what his powerful searchlight revealed to be a low, wide, smoothly circular room. At his feet lapped black, thick-looking waves of an underground lake, a pool of viscous substance that gave off a penetrating, poignant odor of acid, sweetish and intoxicating, unlike any acid he knew. The smell rolled up in a sickening, sultry... more...

The flight was listed at GHQ as Project Songbird. It was sponsored by the Space Medicine Labs of the U.S. Air Force. And its pilot was Captain Dan Barstow. A hand-picked man, Dan Barstow, chosen for the AF's most important project of the year because he and his VX-3 had already broken all previous records set by hordes of V-2s, Navy Aerobees and anything else that flew the skyways. Dan Barstow,... more...

The Triomed advanced stealthily across the floor of the dark cell toward the sleeping figure huddled in the corner. After the long, lonely voyage, the nearness to a host filled the Triomed with eager anticipation. The tiny spaceship that had carried him into this lush planetary system far from the galaxy's heart lay well hidden behind him. So far as he could tell, his descent had not been... more...

The Committee had, unquestionably, made a mistake. There was no doubt that Edie had achieved the long-sought cancer cure ...but awarding the Nobel Prize was, nonetheless, a mistake ...The letter from America arrived too late. The Committee had regarded acceptance as a foregone conclusion, for no one since Boris Pasternak had turned down a Nobel Prize. So when Professor Doctor Nels Christianson opened... more...

Henry Weller stood facing a huge three-dimensional picture on the wall of his dining room. "Can't we get rid of it?" he asked, turning to his wife. "I mean, with all due respect, of course." No man enjoys coming into his dining room and having to sit at meals and look at a full-sized picture of his wife's first husband arriving on Venus. Fair's fair, but such a set-up is... more...

A story that comes to grips with an age-old question—what is soul? and where?—and postulates an age-new answer.If I listed every trouble I've accumulated in a mere two hundred odd years you might be inclined to laugh. When a tale of woe piles up too many details it looks ridiculous, unreal. So here, at the outset, I want to say my life has not been a tragic one—whose life is in this day of... more...

Well you might say I practically grew up with him. He was my hero in those days. I thought few wiser or greater men ever lived. In my eyes he was greater than Babe Ruth, Lindy, or the President. Of course, time, and my growing up caused me to bring him into a perspective that I felt to be more consonant with his true position in his field of endeavor. When he died his friends mourned for fond... more...

Except for old Dworken, Kotha's bar was deserted when I dropped in shortly after midnight. The ship from Earth was still two days away, and the Martian flagship would get in next morning, with seven hundred passengers for Earth on it. Dworken must have been waiting in Luna City a whole week—at six thousand credits a day. That's as steep to me as it is to you, but money never seemed to worry... more...

The single thing to fear was fear—ghastly, walking fear! Stiff with shock, Naomi Heckscher stood just inside the door to Cappy's one-room cabin, where she'd happened to be when her husband discovered the old man's body. Her nearest neighbor—old Cappy—dead. After all his wire-pulling to get into the First Group, and his slaving to make a farm on this alien planet, dead in bed!... more...

GENESIS By H. Beam Piper Was this ill-fated expedition the end of a proud, old race—or the beginning of a new one? There are strange gaps in our records of the past. We find traces of man-like things—but, suddenly, man appears, far too much developed to be the "next step" in a well-linked chain of evolutionary evidence. Perhaps something like the events of this story furnishes the answer to... more...