Science Fiction Books

In a world where Security is all-important, nothing can ever be secure. A mountain-climbing vacation may wind up in deep Space. Or loyalty may prove to be high treason. But it has its rewards. It had been a tough day at the lab, one of those days when nothing seems able to go right. And, of course, it had been precisely the day Hammond, the Efficiency inspector, would choose to stick his nose in.... more...

There are two basic kinds of fools—the ones who know they are fools, and the kind that, because they do not know that, are utterly deadly menaces! The mountain was spinning. Not dizzily, not even rapidly, but very perceptibly, the great mass of jagged rock was turning on its axis. Captain St. Simon scowled at it. "By damn, Jules," he said, "if you can see 'em spinning, it's too... more...

Narvon III, 2277 CE Marine Captain Jase Thompson enjoyed Evaluation Team duty, and this particular assignment appealed to what his team members called his warped sense of humor. This had started out as an odd one; it was the Archbishop of Narvon III, rather than its Baron or the System Count, who had pushed the panic button. He'd appealed to the Emperor for a battle fleet, with a full complement... more...

With the Night Mail At nine o'clock of a gusty winter night I stood on the lower stages of one of the G. P. O. outward mail towers. My purpose was a run to Quebec in "Postal Packet 162 or such other as may be appointed"; and the Postmaster-General himself countersigned the order. This talisman opened all doors, even those in the despatching-caisson at the foot of the tower, where they... more...

Even here, on the black terrace before the forgotten mountain retreat of Asti, it was possible to smell the dank stench of burning Memphir, to imagine that the dawn wind bore upward from the pillaged city the faint tortured cries of those whom the barbarians of Klem hunted to their prolonged death. Indeed it was time to leave— Varta, last of the virgin Maidens of Asti, shivered. The scaled and... more...

CHAPTER 1 "All right, you blasted Earthworms! Stand to!" Three frightened cadet candidates for Space Academy stiffened their backs and stood at rigid attention as Astro faced them, a furious scowl on his rugged features. Behind him, Tom Corbett and Roger Manning lounged on the dormitory bunks, watching their unit mate blast the freshman cadets and trying to keep from laughing. It wasn't... more...

The silver airship cut swiftly through the hot thin air. The noonday sun blazed down upon it and the desert world below. All about was the solemn silence of death. No living thing appeared either in the air or on the drab, gray earth. Only the aircraft itself displayed any signs of life. The sky, blue as indigo, held not the shadow of a cloud, and on the horizon the mountains notched into it like the... more...

It was a small world, a tiny spinning globe, placed in the universe to weather and age by itself until the end of things. But because its air was good and its earth was fertile, Daniel Loveral had placed a finger upon a map and said, "This is the planet. This is the Dream Planet." That was two years before, back on Earth. And now Loveral with his selected flock had shot through space, to light... more...

The coppers smashed my father's printer when I was eight. I remember the hot, cling-film-in-a-microwave smell of it, and Da's look of ferocious concentration as he filled it with fresh goop, and the warm, fresh-baked feel of the objects that came out of it. The coppers came through the door with truncheons swinging, one of them reciting the terms of the warrant through a bullhorn. One of... more...

For some forty years critics of the U.S.S.R. have been desiring, predicting, not to mention praying for, its collapse. For twenty of these years the author of this story has vaguely wondered what would replace the collapsed Soviet system. A return to Czarism? Oh, come now! Capitalism as we know it today in the advanced Western countries? It would seem difficult after almost half a century of State... more...