Science Fiction Books

Jarvis stretched himself as luxuriously as he could in the cramped general quarters of the Ares. "Air you can breathe!" he exulted. "It feels as thick as soup after the thin stuff out there!" He nodded at the Martian landscape stretching flat and desolate in the light of the nearer moon, beyond the glass of the port. The other three stared at him sympathetically—Putz, the engineer,... more...

CHAPTER I. THE ARRIVAL OF THE EUTERPE-THALIA It was about noon of a day in early summer that a westward-bound Atlantic liner was rapidly nearing the port of New York. Not long before, the old light-house on Montauk Point had been sighted, and the company on board the vessel were animated by the knowledge that in a few hours they would be at the end of their voyage. The vessel now speeding along the... more...

In one place, a descendant of the Vikings rode a ship such as Lief never dreamed of; from another, one of the descendants of the Caesars, and here an Apache rode a steed such as never roamed the plains. But they were warriors all. The hatch swung open, admitting a blast of Arctic air and a man clad in a heavy, fur-lined parka. He quickly closed the hatch and turned to the man in the pilot's couch.... more...

I A SOUTHERN ASSIGNMENT   Sunday, the sixth of June, 1903, broke the monotony of the life that we were leading at the Post of Hassi-Inifel by two events of unequal importance, the arrival of a letter from Mlle. de C——, and the latest numbers of the Official Journal of the French Republic. "I have the Lieutenant's permission?" said Sergeant Chatelain, beginning to glance through the... more...

ameron frowned intently at the top of the desk. It was difficult to concentrate under the circumstances. "Your request was turned over to the Medicouncil," he said. "After studying it, they reported back to the Solar Committee." Docchi edged forward, his face literally lighting up. Dr. Cameron kept his eyes averted; the man was damnably disconcerting. "You know what the answer is. A... more...

The captain had learned to hate. It was his profession—and his personal reason for going on. But even hatred has to be channeled for its maximum use, and no truths exist forever. The battle alarm caught him in the middle of a dream, a dream that took place in a white house in a small town in Ohio, when both he and Alice had been very young and the grown adults he now called his children had really... more...

All Dave Miller wanted to do was commit suicide in peace. He tried, but the things that happened after he'd pulled the trigger were all wrong. Like everyone standing around like statues. No St. Peter, no pearly gate, no pitchforks or halos. He might just as well have saved the bullet!Dave Miller would never have done it, had he been in his right mind. The Millers were not a melancholy stock, hardly... 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...

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...

THE way led along upon what had once been the embankment of a railroad. But no train had run upon it for many years. The forest on either side swelled up the slopes of the embankment and crested across it in a green wave of trees and bushes. The trail was as narrow as a man's body, and was no more than a wild-animal runway. Occasionally, a piece of rusty iron, showing through the forest-mould,... more...